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  He’d been the expert then, but today it was her turn.

  Nerves flapped vulture-sized wings in her stomach as she considered the challenge he’d set. She had photographed horses once—Sky’s horses, as it happened. That had been a class assignment back before Christmas and she’d spent long hours alternatively perched on a railing fence and prone in the frozen meadow capturing the vibrant spirit, the athleticism, and the individual personalities of a group of colts in a field beyond Sky’s barn.

  The results had impressed her teacher so much that he’d included them in a winter exhibition in his gallery and then offered her a job there. They’d impressed Sky so much that she’d offered her this job.

  Which left one person still to impress….

  He was leaning on the half-door, watching her watch his horse. That silent observation fed more adrenaline into her system and she had to fight a momentary attack of who-am-I-fooling panic. Throwing up her breakfast would not look expert, capable or professional.

  Forcing her focus to the horse as it paced the roomy stable, she framed a series of shots through an imaginary viewfinder. What she saw settled and excited her nerves in equal measures. Could she capture that ripple of muscles beneath the horse’s burnished copper coat? Could she depict all that latent power in a single flat dimension?

  “I’ll have to take her moving,” she decided, “in order to do her justice.”

  “Not a portrait?”

  “That would be too static, don’t you think?” He looked dubious, but the longer Diana watched the animal’s graceful stride, the more confident she became in her first instinctive call. She tried another angle. “I gather she’s a racehorse?”

  “A retired one.”

  “Was she a fast one?”

  “Fast and strong,” he supplied, and the softened note of respect in his voice drew Diana’s gaze back to his profile. Still the same square jaw that framed his face in steely strength.

  Or, when he wanted his own way, in stubborn determination.

  But the years had sculpted change in the hollowed planes beneath his cheekbones, in the fretted lines radiating from the corners of his narrowed gaze, in the straight set of his unsmiling mouth.

  Diana longed to ask what had turned him so stern and disapproving, and why he was directing that acrimony toward her. But in talking about his horse she sensed the first easing in the tension between them and she wanted to prolong that mood. It wasn’t exactly harmonious but it was a start.

  “I would like to depict her as that fast, strong athlete you described. In motion. With the sun on her coat.” She paused, watching his face, trying to gauge his reaction. “That’s what I see when I look at her, but you’re the client.”

  “And the client is always right?”

  “No, but the client pays the bill so he always has the final say.”

  As if she wanted the final word, the horse extended her neck over the door and whinnied softly. Aware of Max’s watchfulness, of being under his judgment, she forced herself to hold her ground. The horse seemed friendly enough. It was sniffing at her hair. No teeth were visible, which had to be a good thing. Diana took a steadying breath.

  “Hello,” she said softly, and was pleased that her voice didn’t betray her horse-getting-far-too-close jeebies. “What is your name, beautiful?”

  Max might have cleared his throat. Or it could have been a throaty horse noise from a neighboring stable. Diana lifted a hand—it hardly shook at all—and stroked the horse’s face. A brass plate attached to the leather halter she wore was engraved with a single word.

  “Bootylicious,” she read. Brows lifted in surprise and amusement, she turned to Max. “Is that her name?”

  “Don’t blame me.” He held up both hands defensively. “The name came with her.”

  And it was so not a name he would have chosen. Diana couldn’t help smiling. “I think it is a very fitting name. Unique and distinctive,” she said, pleased that the tension had eased enough that she could joke and smile without it feeling like her face might split with the effort. “Perfect for a foundation mare for your new stud farm,” she continued, tongue-in-cheek. “You could name all her offspring Booty-something.”

  He shot her a disgusted look. “Luckily she’s not part of the new operation.”

  “She’s not? From what Sky said, I thought you and Zack were over here buying breeding stock.”

  “We are.” He shifted his position, allowing the bootylicious one room to move off, before he leaned back against the door. Almost relaxed, Diana noted, with rich satisfaction. And finally he’d stopped glowering. “This mare was a champion miler but she’s got too much sprinter’s blood in her pedigree.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Not for some studs, but we’re looking to breed champion stayers…for long distance races,” he clarified, when she looked askance. “This one’s bloodlines don’t fit the bill.”

  “But you bought her anyway?”

  “A gift for my parents. I’m leaving her here with Sky until she’s safely in foal. That’s why I want the photos, to send them in lieu of the real thing.”

  “Easier to gift wrap.”

  “Much,” he agreed, and a hint of the lopsided grin she loved lurked around the corners of his mouth.

  Loved? Diana gave herself a quick mental shake. What they’d shared was not love, no matter what she’d thought during those blissful months. Mention of his parents whom she had never met acted as the perfect reminder.

  “How is your family?” she asked out of politeness.

  “They’re all well.”

  “And you, Max?” Not out of politeness, but because she couldn’t help herself. She had to know. “How have you been?”

  “Fine.”

  On the surface it sounded liked a stock answer, the kind you pay no heed to. But all traces of that near-smile had vanished from his face and, as he pushed off the door and started toward the horse, Diana detected a stiffening in his posture.

  Alarm fluttered in her chest. “Are you?” she asked, before she could think better of it.

  “Why would you assume otherwise?”

  “Because you seem so different, so—” she let her hands rise and fall as she struggled to describe the vibes he’d been giving off “—uptight.”

  “You said you’re not the same person. Same goes.”

  Okay, but now he sounded downright hostile and Diana couldn’t let it go. Not now that she’d started. “We’ve both changed, as people tend to do, but at Case’s party you were unfriendly to the point of rudeness. I thought you might have been too travel-lagged to recognize me, or that you simply may not have remembered. But that’s not the problem, is it?”

  He clipped a lead rope onto the horse’s halter before he turned. The hat shaded his eyes but the line of his mouth definitely fit her description. Uptight and unfriendly. “You were introduced as Diana Young. Do I know you?”

  “After my husband died it was easier to keep his name. Plus there are advantages to not carrying the Fielding name around…not that it matters. I’m still me.”

  “Well, there’s the thing,” he said in his deep, down-under drawl. “I don’t know that I ever knew you.”

  That shocked a short, astonished laugh from Diana. Never in her thirty-one years had she been as honest, as open, as herself, as in the time she’d spent as Max’s lover. “How can you say that? I shared everything with you!”

  “Yeah, you shared. That’s what I don’t appreciate, Mrs. Young. That’s why I’m not feeling as friendly toward you as I used to.”

  “What do you mean?” Diana shook her head slowly. “What on earth do you think I shared?”

  “Your body, mostly. How did Mr. Young like that?”

  “Are you implying that I was already married?” she asked with rising incredulity.

  “Not married, but you must have been engaged.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You expect me to believe you met and married this Young chara
cter less than three weeks after leaving me? I guess it must have been love at first sight, then.”

  Diana reared back, stung by the bitter irony of his accusation. Love at first sight had been Max. Her marriage to David Young, a big, inescapable, back-firing disaster. She’d always guarded the details closely because she knew what the gossip media would make of it. And because she didn’t enjoy admitting to the naivety and weakness that had opened her up to emotional blackmail, to the power she’d allowed her father and David Young to exert over her.

  At one time she would have shared those details with Max—she’d called him, Lord knows, she’d tried. But not now. Not after those coldly delivered accusations.

  Instead she fastened on the other untruth in his argument. “I didn’t leave you, Max. I went home because I had to…and only after we agreed that we saw our relationship somewhat differently. You wanted sex, I wanted more.”

  He stared at her a moment, no sign of giving in the hard set of his face. It was the same uncompromising expression as the night they’d quarreled, when she’d realized how woefully she’d misconstrued their relationship. “You wanted to get married that bad?” he asked now. “That you said yes to the first batter up after I walked away from the plate?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she fired back. “David was my father’s business partner. I didn’t agree to marry him for the sake of a wedding band, okay?”

  His lips compressed into a straight line of condemnation, and Diana realized that her angry outburst added weight to his belief she’d been involved with David all along. She thought about rephrasing but what did it matter? Driving here today she’d cautioned herself about getting involved again. She did not need this old heartache.

  “My relationship with you was over when I returned to New York and you didn’t bother to acknowledge my calls,” she said, mustering some dignity and wrapping it around her like a protective cloak. “It’s been ten years. Why are we rehashing old quarrels?”

  “You brought it up.”

  “And, frankly, I’m sorry I did.”

  “Seems we agree on one thing.”

  For a long moment Diana couldn’t find any comeback, and to her horror she felt the ache of tears building at the back of her throat. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t pretend emotional detachment any more than she’d been able to ten years before.

  “It seems that I’ve come to agree with you on another point.” She swallowed against the painful lump that was making it so dashed difficult to maintain her dignity. “I don’t believe I’m the right photographer for this job after all.”

  “Suit yourself.” He gave a curt shrug. “You’re not indispensable, Diana. I can find a replacement.”

  Glutton for punishment, she had to ask. “Is that what you did after I left Australia? Is that why you never returned my calls?”

  He paused in opening the stable door, close enough now that she could see the wintry chill of his eyes and beneath the green patina a hint of some deeper emotion. Pain? Regret? Frustration? He shut the door behind him with a thud of finality and whatever she’d thought she’d seen was gone.

  “Something like that,” he said in answer to her question. Then he touched his hat in a cowboy’s salute of farewell and walked away.

  Two

  “Is there something wrong with your lunch?”

  Diana blinked until the chicken breast she’d been worrying around her plate came into focus. “No, it’s fine.”

  “And you know this,” Eliza asked, “because…?”

  Trust her friend to point out the obvious. Diana gave up on her untouched meal and put down her silverware. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this.”

  This happened to be a late lunch in the atrium restaurant at the Fortune’s Seven Hotel. The hotel’s ballroom was the scene of next month’s Historical Society Auction to raise funds for reparations to the city’s Old West Museum. The fundraising committee, chaired by Eliza, had met earlier to discuss the function with hotel staff, and Eliza had used her gently persuasive charm to cajole Diana into lunch and a shopping expedition afterward.

  “I’m not good company today,” Diana added.

  “You don’t say.”

  Diana pulled a face at her friend’s dry comment and watched her eyes turn serious as she, too, abandoned her entrée and leaned back in her chair. Eliza waited for the wait-staff to remove their plates before skewering her with the million-dollar question.

  “I don’t suppose this would have anything to do with my Aussie cousin?”

  “Would you believe me if I said no?”

  “No. At Case’s party I could have cut the tension between you two with a butter knife, and I get the feeling you’ve been sidestepping me ever since. You know I’m dying to hear details. Come on,” Eliza coaxed, leaning forward in her chair again. “Spill.”

  As usual, Eliza was right. Diana had been avoiding her friend’s curiosity and now she wished she hadn’t been such a coward. After this morning’s altercation with Max, today had to be the worst possible time for the explanation she owed her best friend. But she did owe Eliza the details she begged, so she might as well get it over and done.

  “We met at a party in Australia,” she began, jumping into the deep end. “On the trip I took after we graduated from Wellesley.”

  Eliza digested this for a moment, shock evident in her blue eyes. “I gave you the contact number for my Aussie relations. You met them and you didn’t say a word?”

  “I’m sorry, Eliza, truly I am. I didn’t meet any of your family except Max, and I didn’t mean to keep him a secret. I just didn’t know how to tell you I was having a hot and heavy affair with your cousin. I knew you’d want details and I couldn’t talk about something I didn’t understand. I don’t even know that I can explain what happened between us now! Then I came home and married David…”

  “And your life fell to pieces,” Eliza finished softly after Diana’s attempted explanation trailed off.

  Their gazes met for a second, remembering the anguish of those years after her forced marriage, when Diana had cut herself off from all her friends. Yet Eliza, her roommate at Wellesley, had continued to send Christmas gifts and birthday cards, and when she’d read about David’s death in a newspaper, she’d flown out to California for the funeral.

  After the service she’d learned the whole sorry story of Diana’s marriage. She met David’s sons, too, and when their attempts to prevent Diana taking anything from her marriage grew vindictive, she’d invited Diana to visit her in Sioux Falls. Diana had only returned to California to pack her things. Her move to Sioux Falls and all the good, confidence-building, independence-gaining things that ensued were all due to Eliza’s friendship.

  “I’m sorry.” Diana’s second apology vibrated with regret and the threat of tears. “I should have told you about Max.”

  “That the hound dog hit on you at a party? Perhaps it’s better you didn’t!”

  Diana managed to smile at Eliza’s teasing remark despite the ache in her chest. That was the thing about her friend—she had a gift of measuring the mood and choosing the perfect moment to lighten the tone. “I think it’s fair to say that the hitting-on was a mutual thing. Remember when we studied French? Remember how we mocked the drama of the coup de foudre?”

  “The stroke of lightning,” Eliza murmured. “Love at first sight.”

  “I know it’s a romantic cliché, but when I met Max I actually experienced that lightning strike. The ground shifted. Time stood still then raced through six and a half weeks. I didn’t know how to explain that to anyone, Eliza, and I had this self-centered desire to hug it to myself.”

  “Do I gather it ended badly?” Eliza asked.

  “However did you guess?”

  “The day Max arrived, he was so laidback and charming. I knew you had to meet him, which is why I called and made sure you were coming to the party. I had a notion you two would get along. But then I introduced you and he couldn’t raise a smile. It was s
o unlike him.” Eliza’s reached across the table and put her hand over Diana’s, perhaps because she’d noticed the wobble in her composure. “You know I was only teasing about spilling details. You don’t have to tell me anything that’s too upsetting.”

  “I have no reason to be upset,” Diana replied quickly. “Except seeing him again has me all churned up with the bad part of the memories more than the good.” But after taking a deep breath, she wanted to share, to ease the angst that had been building ever since he’d walked away from her that morning in the barn. “I had extended my holiday once and Father was making noises about needing me at home. I didn’t know what was going on and selfishly I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to leave Australia—I didn’t want to leave Max—and so I pushed him for a reason to stay.”

  “He didn’t want you to stay?”

  “Let’s just say he didn’t appreciate me pressuring him for commitment or acting shrewish over the number of ex-girlfriends who called. I should have read the signs right there, but I didn’t.”

  Eliza winced in sympathy. “No one wants to be one of many.”

  “I suppose not and with Max there was quite the backlist. Apparently he’d been sized up as marriage material once too often and I made the same mistake. So we quarreled and he left on a business trip and while he was away everything hit the fan with my sister. I had to catch a flight home that day and I didn’t even know where Max had gone. I left a note and a message on his service and I called again from New York.”

  Her shrug said the rest and Eliza’s clasp on her hand tightened. “He didn’t return your calls?”

  “I ended up contacting his neighbor, who I’d met in passing. He told me Max had gone to this big outback race-meeting that lasted all week—not work, but a party! Oh, and he knew because Max had taken his sister, Eva.” Diana smiled gamely but the bitter ache of that discovery, of that whole horrendous week, squeezed like a fisted hand around her heart. “Can you believe I expected we had more from a holiday fling? Can you believe I was that naive?”