Free Summer Games by Elizabeth Lowell

in Japan or her mother in Berlin.
    Perhaps it was her sister, calling before the latest round of political fund-raisers. Or, even more likely, it was one of the increasing number of reporters who had discovered that Raine Smith, Olympic equestrian, was also Lorraine Todhunter Chandler-Smith, daughter of old wealth and older power.
    “It better not be a reporter,” she said. “I’m flat out of polite ways to tell them to get stuffed.”
    Amused, Captain Jon stepped away from the stall door and opened it. “I could remind you that event riding needs all the publicity it can get.”
    “You could.”
    “And then you’d tell me to get stuffed.”
    She gave him a genuine smile. “Nope. You’re the only man who has guts enough to help me with Dev.”
    “Doesn’t speak highly of my intelligence, does it?”
    Still smiling, Raine patted Dev’s muscular rump and walked out of the stall, shutting the door behind her. The broad aisle between rows of stalls was clean, sunny, and dusty, despite constant spraying from the hoses coiled in front of every stall. Hot-blooded horses stood quietly in their stalls, coats gleaming with health, heads turning while they watched everything that happened with alert, liquid brown eyes.
    As she and the captain walked down the aisle, horses poked their heads over stall doors. Some of the horses whickered softly when they scented her, asking for a word or a touch. She responded almost absently, stroking velvet noses, teasing the lips that nibbled playfully at her fingertips, and through it all she kept walking toward the phone at the end of the long, dusty aisle, wondering who was on the other end of the line.
    “I called your name three times before you noticed me,” Captain Jon said. “Perhaps I should get you a beeper.”
    “Like bloody hell.”
    His white eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t think it was that bad an idea.”
    “I don’t like electronic leashes.”
    “No kidding,” he answered, in a too-innocent tone. The American slang sounded odd coming from the Eton-educated Swiss aristocrat.
    After giving Captain Jon a narrow glance, Raine relented with a smile. “Sorry. It comes of being raised with the damn things. Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Pan-American Games—it didn’t matter. Somewhere in the world, hell is always breaking loose. Beep-beep and good-bye.”
    Captain Jon didn’t argue. He knew better than anyone that Raine’s father had managed to attend only three of the dozens of competitions she had been in over the years. Nor had those three been the crucial ones, the competitions where a smile or a touch or a thumbs-up from your family really mattered.
    “Worry about your own piece of the world,” the captain advised, rubbing his hand through his thinning gray hair. “Leave the rest of it to the pros.”
    Men like Cord, she thought, but she said nothing aloud. She simply stroked another velvet muzzle and kept walking.
    “Speaking of the rest of the world,” Captain Jon said, “we have an amendment to the security regulations. Riders who want to look over the country around Rancho Santa Fe have to use the buddy system.”
    “Shit,” she hissed under her breath.
    The captain’s eyebrows rose. The word wasn’t a normal part of Raine’s conversation. Or even an abnormal part. She must be really on edge. Being a wise man, he didn’t mention that fact.
    Belatedly Raine realized that she hadn’t kept her response soft enough so that it wouldn’t be heard. That wasn’t like her. She must be a lot closer to competition madness than she thought. “Sorry. Again.”
    “I hear much worse,” he said dryly. “It’s a way of letting off steam.”
    “So I’m told.”
    “Is it working?” he asked.
    “Too soon to know.”
    “If you run out of American and British slang, try the Aussies. They’re very inventive.”
    “I’ll keep it in mind.” Impatiently she swiped some hair off her face and stuffed it behind her ear. “Buddy system. Hell on the