IRISH FIRE by Jeanette Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

Claibornes idea of
nothing
in no way resembled Caitlins definition of the term. She would have laughed in his face if it hadnt been for paragraph three in the proposed settlement, a paragraph far more chilling and cruel than his taunt to leave her penniless. He wanted custody of the children.
    Sam had underestimated her. Caitlin would die before giving up her children.
Kentucky Gold
s foal meant far more than a winning purse. It meant stud and breeding fees, foals, syndicated shareseverything she needed to break free of the Claiborne yoke and keep her children. The money would keep them until the foal reached racing age. After that Caitlin was on her own.
    She had every hope of success. She was Irish, and Ireland was the place for a trainer to establish a repututation. Fees were low, yards were inexpensive, and the Irish Curragh was the only stud in the world where horses were trained on the same track where they raced. The spindly, chestnut colt shed pulled feet first into the world was her single hope for the future.

4

    B rian Hennessey had never really loved a woman. He knew that now, at least not the way a man does when he thinks in terms of children and a forever kind of permanence, the kind found in marriage vows, insurance policies, and adjoining cemetery plots. Women and their preoccupation with order and appearance were fine in small doses, to attend the cinema or to share a meal with and, if they were willing, occasionally a bed, but that was the extent of it.
    For some inexplicable reason, Caitlin Claiborne, reeking of horse blood and amniotic fluid, her arms halfway up the insides of a laboring broodmare had come closer than anyone to revealing the folly of his assumptions. Caitlin was the kind of woman who turned a mans insides to mush, the kind he could count on to keep going when everything around her fell apart and there wasnt much hope of coming about.
    It wasnt just that she was willing to dirty her hands with hard work. Brian didnt know of an Irish woman who hadnt defined the phrase with a whole new dimension. Nor was it the way her eyes and mouth had gone soft when the colt finally made his appearance. Brian had known a number of women, and men as well, whose insides turned to jelly at the sight of a newborn colt. There was something incredibly unassuming about her, as if she didnt know she had the kind of beauty that scared a man witless, as if she didnt care what he thought of her.
    He liked the way she persevered during her mares delivery, working hard enough for the arteries to pop up on the sides of her neck. Women didnt normally allow a man to see that, as if strain somehow demeaned them or made them less feminine. And for a single brief instant after the colt was delivered, shed included him in her happiness. Something told him it would be no small thing to be a part of Caitlin Claibornes joy.
    He couldnt afford to fall in love with her. It hit him that moment in the kitchen when theyd stared at one another, the absolute polarity of who they were. She was Mrs. Samuel Claiborne, with fourteen years in America behind her and the resources to stable ten mares at the Curragh Stud Farm. He was a salaried employee living in rented quarters with a savings account that next to Sam Claibornes millions would look like pocket change.
    Brian absently caressed the shapely head of his six-year-old collie, Neeve, and watched the blinking light on his fax machine spit out yet another sheet of paper into the overflowing tray. It was almost dawn. Hed been awake for nearly twenty-four hours and still sleep eluded him. He knew the reason for his insomnia. He wasnt a complicated enough person to have hidden, unprobeable depths. Only once had he misread himself.
    That mistake had sent him in the wrong direction for a number of years. It was his friend, Father Martin OShea, whod shown him the error in his thinking. He couldnt completely regret those years. Without them he might have followed his father to the fishing