“As if you didn’t know.” Now she sneered. “As if all of Big Sur and Monterey and down to Carmel don’t know that that man all but emptied all their bank accounts, and the stocks and bonds and properties before the divorce.”

“Ridgeway.” His eyes flashed, dark, sharp, swords tilted for battle. “Why isn’t he dead?”

Ann sucked in a breath. On this, at least, she could agree even with a rogue. But she had said more than she’d intended. “It isn’t my place to gossip with a stablehand.”

“I’m not a stablehand, and you’ve never let your place stop you when it comes to me. Why did they let Ridgeway get away with it? Josh could have stopped it, the Templetons could have crucified him.”

“It’s Miss Laura’s business, and her choice.” Ann folded her hands and closed her lips.

“It doesn’t add up.” He took the grain to Max, who was waiting patiently. “She’s got to have family money to wade in. She’s got that house, and servants. Nobody lives like that and worries about pennies.”

Ann made a derisive sound. “Miss Laura’s financial business is none of yours, Michael Fury. But if you’ve been thinking to soften her into letting loose of some of her money in your direction, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

She recognized black fury in a man when she saw it, and also the rigid control that prevented it from spewing out. She’d expected the first, but never the second.

“So warned,” he said and went back to feeding his horses.

She started to speak again. Had that been hurt beneath the boiling temper? No, she refused to believe it of a man like him. Still, she bit her lip, wondering how her words would taste if she was wrong and did indeed have to eat them.

“I’ll leave you to your business.”

When she left, he continued to measure grain, precisely. Then the scoop flew out of his hands, smashed against the stable wall with enough force to snap its handle off. In the stalls several of the horses stirred nervously. Max stopped eating long enough to look out and study his master.

“Fuck me,” Michael murmured and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’ve got enough to do. Goddamn woman should be in bed.” He picked up the scoop, threw it again. Then went to find a new one.

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

By two in the afternoon, Laura had entered a new phase of exhaustion. It was almost pleasant, the way she seemed to float just an inch or so off the ground and the way the air around her seemed rather soft and fluid.