Down the stretch, Double lengthened his lead. The crowd roared for him, a flood of sound that overwhelmed everything else. Then for High Water, the five-to-one shot that streaked into third and kept gaining during that heart-stopping final three-sixteenths.

"My God, look at him! My God, Mom, just look at him!"

"I am." Tears mixed with the rain running down Naomi's face. She wrapped her arm tight around Kelsey's waist as they finished 5-7-2. Double had the black-eyed Susans, but High Water had edged out Arkansas for second.

"He did it!" Kelsey let her binoculars drop. "The little guy did it!" She hugged Naomi first, laughing out the victory. "Nobody believed it. None of us believed it." She whirled and with a whoop launched herself into Gabe's arms. "Congratulations! What was the time? What was his time?"

Gabe held up the stopwatch, amused when Kelsey snatched it from him. A minute fifty-seven and a quarter.

She laughed again, rain dripping from her hair onto her face. "Gabriel Slater, you've just won the second jewel in the Triple Crown. What are you going to do now? And I know you're not going to Disney World."

"I'm going to Belmont." He lifted her high, spun her around once, then kissed her. " We're going to Belmont."

Inside the clubhouse, Rich Slater toasted the image of his son and Kelsey on the monitor, then downed the aged scotch. A handsome couple, he thought. A very handsome couple they made, much as he and Naomi would have done if she hadn't turned her icy nose up at him.

But there were other matters to contemplate. Other matters to celebrate.

He'd put ten of the hundred thousand he'd bled out of Cunningham on Double's nose. He was quite satisfied with the profits.

For now.

"I hope you don't mind." Kelsey opened the champagne with a cheery pop. She'd already had several glasses in her mother's suite, but the night was young. "I'm going to finish this entire bottle. And I may get considerably drunk."

Gabe sat, crossing his feet at the ankles. He'd been fantasizing about a long, hot, very steamy shower for two. But he could wait. It might be interesting to see how many more inhibitions Kelsey let fly after a bottle of Dom.

"Just because I don't drink doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy watching you indulge yourself."

"I'm going to." She poured, then watched the bubbles froth recklessly over the lip of the flute. "You know, I've never really been drunk. I've been close, but I always pulled myself back." She took a long swallow, waved her hand. "Breeding. Don't want to get too loose at the club-people will talk. Don't want to get too loose at a party-other people will talk." This time she waved the bottle. "Bydens do not solicit gossip."

"What do they solicit?"

"Respect, admiration, and, above all, discretion." She closed one eye to narrow her vision and poured more wine. "The hell with that. Let 'em talk. We won. Isn't it incredible?"

"Yes, it is." He smiled at her. She was barefoot now, and her hair had dried in a glorious tangle of pale gold.

"Everyone was so down before. Trying not to be, but it was so hard. I saw Reno in the paddock, and it just broke my heart." She drank again, sighed, and decided she liked the way champagne made the room circle. Glass in hand, she executed two slow pirouettes to help it along.

"Do that again." He wanted the pleasure of watching the way her hair flowed out, settled, flowed out, settled.

With a giddy laugh, she obliged him. "See, those lessons were good for something. Taught me discipline, too, mental and physical. You know, you could break bricks on this body."

"I'm sure I can find more interesting things to do with it."

She laughed again, knowing he could. Would. "We were talking about the race. I hope it made Reno feel better. You could see how happy Naomi and Moses were. Even Boggs. Poor old Boggs, blaming himself 'cause he bet on Pride. It had nothing to do with it. People are always looking for ways to tie things together. Like Rossi."

"Rossi?"

"Mmmm." She poured another glass, then absently began to unbutton her shirt. It was getting warmer by the swallow. "He was there, at the race. I talked to him. Or he talked to me. He seems to be there every time you turn around, watching, working out his theories. Why should anyone want to hurt Naomi, or make people wonder?"

Gabe adjusted his focus. Her shirt was open to the first sweet curve of breast. But he wanted to concentrate on her words. "Is that what he thinks?"

"Who knows?" She gave a careless shrug. "I don't think he really tells you what he thinks. If you follow me," she said after a moment. "He just says things to sort of plant them in your mind and drive you crazy.

But at least he doesn't seem to be looking at Naomi as some sort of horse assassin." She smiled winningly. "He's still got one eye on you, Slater."

"I never doubted it."

"But only one eye." She closed one of her own to demonstrate. "He doesn't think you're obvious."

"Quite a compliment, coming from that source." He decided he could concentrate on Kelsey's emerging flesh after all. "You've got a couple more buttons there, darling."

"I'm getting them. I've never stripped for a man before."

"Let me be the first."

She chuckled, and with her eyes half closed fumbled open the snap of her jeans. "It irritated me, seeing him there. Rossi, I mean. It started me thinking back over the Derby. All the things that happened.

Watching the horses come back through the mist after morning workout. The smells, the sounds, the nerves. Boggs hanging up Pride's wrappings and talking about his last bet. How he thought he saw your father."

"What?" The blood Kelsey's careless striptease had been heating froze like a river of ice. "What did you say about my father?"

"Oh, Boggs thought he saw him at Churchill Downs. He thought it was bad luck. But I don't suppose he was there, or he'd have let you know."

"Kelsey." Gabe rose, took her glass out of her hand and set it aside. "What did Boggs say about the old man?"

"Nothing much." She blew out a long breath. Her head was spinning, a lovely feeling, but Gabe's eyes were so intense they burned through the fog. "Just that he thought he'd seen him around the shedrow."

He had her arms now. "When?"

"Sometime that morning. But he wasn't sure. He said he only got a glimpse and his eyes aren't good anymore." She shook her head, trying fruitlessly to clear it. "What difference does it make?"

"None," Gabe said, gentling his hold. Or all. All the difference in the world. "I just wondered."

"The past has a way of squeezing the throat." She lifted a hand to his face. "We shouldn't let it. We have now."

"Yes, we do." It could wait, Gabe told himself. Odds were it was nothing, but whatever it was, he would deal with it when they returned home. "Let's see." He cupped her chin, studied her flushed face and blinking eyes. "Darling, you're going to have one hell of a headache come morning."

"Well, then." She hooked her arms around his neck. In one lithe leap she encircled his waist, legs locked. "Then we'd better make it worth it, right?"

"It's the least I can do. Let's go into the shower." He lowered his head and nipped at her bare shoulder.

"I'll show you what I have in mind."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SHE THOUGHT ABOUT TELLING GABE. CERTAINLY IT WASN'T A MATTER of dependence to tell a man you were so intimately involved with about your intentions. It wouldn't have been weak to ask him to come with her, to lend a little moral support when she faced her past.

But she hadn't told him. Because, intellect aside, it felt dependent. It felt weak. And it was, when you scraped away all of the excess, her problem.

In any case, he hardly had a minute he could call his own. It wasn't every year there was a viable contender for the Triple Crown who had two jewels already in place. His hands were full with the press, his mind full of tensions and possibilities, and his days full overseeing the interim three weeks of training before the Belmont Stakes.

She didn't want to distract him from the goal. A goal, she'd begun to realize, that meant a great deal more to him than money and prestige. To Gabe, the Triple Crown would be proof that he had taken something and not only made it his own, but made it extraordinary.

Underlying that, she didn't want him to toss her own advice back in her face. It wasn't wise to let the past strangle you.

But she couldn't break free of it, not completely. The longer she knew Naomi, the more she grew to care for her, the less Kelsey could believe that her mother had coldly killed a man. Or hotly, for that matter.

There was no disputing the fact that Naomi had pulled the trigger. That she had ended a life. Not only did Naomi admit it, not only had a jury convicted her, but there had been a witness.

Kelsey decided she couldn't lay the past to rest until she'd spoken with Charles Rooney.

She enjoyed the drive. It was difficult not to appreciate, no matter how crowded the highway, the green banks and bursting blooms of full spring. She had the top down and Chopin soaring. The better, she'd decided, to keep her mind off what she was about to do.

She hadn't lied, precisely, in giving Rooney's secretary the name "Kelsey Monroe" when she'd made the appointment. It was merely a precaution, a way to be certain Rooney didn't immediately connect her with Naomi.

A bending of those stiff codes of right and wrong, she thought. She'd always been amused by and disdainful of people who considered white lies acceptable. Or convenient. And here she was, using that same slippery rope to climb to her own ends.

Evaluate later, she told herself.

Nor had she been completely truthful when she'd made excuses to take the afternoon off. Errands and appointments had simply been evasions. She knew Naomi assumed she was going to meet the family.

And she'd let Naomi think just that.

Whatever the outcome of the afternoon, Kelsey doubted she'd pass it along to her mother. For the first time since they'd lost Pride, Naomi seemed relaxed again. No one expected High Water to repeat his Preakness performance in the grueling mile and a half at Belmont.

The point had been made, the victory won. Now they could reap the rewards.

And she could steal a few hours and dig into the muck of the past.

She'd already mapped out her route in and through the city. Though she wasn't very familiar with Alexandria, she found the building easily enough, and slipped into an empty spot in the underground garage.

Nerves pressed on her, irritating her with damp hands and a skittish stomach. She took her time, deliberately setting the brake, locking the car, tucking her keys into the zippered compartment of her purse.

What could be worse? she asked herself. What could be worse than knowing your mother killed a man?

Whatever Charles Rooney told her couldn't be much of a shock. It was only that she, somehow, wanted it to come together tidily in her mind. Then, once and for all, she would be able to accept the woman Naomi had become and stop dwelling on the woman she had been.

The elevator took her to the fifth floor, up from the echoing concrete of the garage to the hushed, carpeted hallways. Glass doors and windows etched with names flanked both sides. Inside them, people worked, with all appearance of industry, at word processors and telephones.

It made her shudder. How would it feel to be on display all through working hours to anyone who happened to wander down the hall? How would it feel to be trapped behind that glass with spring rioting outside?

Struck by her own thoughts, she shook her head. It hadn't been so very long ago that she'd been inside, and just as much on display as the exhibits she'd taken her little tour groups to see in the museum.

How completely a few short months had changed her outlook, and her desires.

Rooney Investigation Services took up the south corner of the building. It was not, as she had assumed, a small operation, nor did it convey that vaguely seamy atmosphere so often created in television and movie portrayals of detective agencies.

No rye in the file cabinets here, she decided, as she entered the glass doors into soft background music and the scent of gardenias.

The romantic fragrance wafted from the waxy blooms tumbling out of jardinieres on either side of a pastel sectional sofa. There were prints of Monet's floating water lilies on the walls and a reproduction Queen Anne coffee table fanned with glossy copies of Southern Homes.

The woman seated at the circular ebony workstation in the center of the room was as polished as the furnishings. She glanced up from her monitor and aimed a professional but surprisingly warm smile at Kelsey.

"May I help you?"

"I have an appointment with Mr. Rooney."

"Ms. Monroe? Yes, you're a few minutes early. If you'd just take a seat, I'll see if Mr. Rooney is ready to see you."

Kelsey sat next to the gardenias, picked up a magazine, and for the next ten minutes pretended to be absorbed in the fussy decor of an antebellum mansion outside of Raleigh. All the while her nerves and her conscience pricked at her.

She shouldn't have come. She certainly shouldn't have given a name she no longer used or wanted. She had no business poking fingers in Naomi's affairs. She should get up and tell the stunning and efficient receptionist that she'd made a mistake.

Surely she wouldn't be the first person to make a panicked dash from a detective's office. And even if she were, what did it matter?

She should be back at the barn, working with Honor, not sitting here smelling gardenias and staring at a picture of someone's overly decorated living room.

But she didn't get up, not until the receptionist called her name again and offered to show her in.

There were several doors on either side of the inner corridor. No glass here, Kelsey noted. Whatever went on inside those rooms was private. Discretion would be an integral part of the business.

And because it was, why did she expect Charles Rooney to tell her anything, even after twenty-three years?

Because she had the right, she told herself, and straightened her shoulders. Because she was Naomi Chadwick's daughter.

"Mr. Rooney, Ms. Monroe to see you." The receptionist opened one half of the double oak doors, scooted Kelsey inside, then retreated.

It was a simple room, furnished more like a den than an office, with glassy-eyed big game fish mounted on the walls, models of ships lining shelves. The man who rose from behind the desk might have been everyone's favorite uncle. Slightly paunchy, slightly bald, round-faced and narrow-shouldered. His tie was slightly askew, as if he'd recently tugged against the restriction.

He had a quiet, friendly voice meant to put the most nervous client at ease.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting, Ms. Monroe. Would you like some coffee?" He gestured toward a Krups coffeemaker on the table behind him. "I keep a pot in here, to keep the juices flowing."

"No, thank you, nothing. But you go ahead." She made herself sit, using the time he gave her while pouring his own mug to study him and his milieu.

Such an ordinary man, she thought, in an ordinary place. How could he have had such a devastating influence on so many lives?

"Now, Ms. Monroe, you indicated you needed some help with a custody case." He seated himself, idly stirring his spoon around and around in the mug. Already a fresh legal pad was waiting for his notes.