Emerald Mistress by Lynne Graham Page B

was safe to do so. Alice would have been much more open and extrovert and exciting. Perhaps that was yet another good reason why Luke had chosen to be with her sister rather than her.
    ‘Don’t get me wrong. Una’s a good kid,’ Fergal added hurriedly. ‘She’ll soon find someone more her age.’
    Suspecting that Una was too passionate to quicklyforget her first love, Harriet said nothing. She struggled to shut Alice and Luke out of her thoughts again. The past was the past and she had to live with it.
    In the horsebox, Una chattered pointedly to Harriet while shooting stony glances at a blissfully unaware Fergal as he drove. The fields where the Point-to-Point races were being held were accessed down a long rough lane. Marquee tents served as a weighing room for the jockeys and also provided a bar with one side walled off in a members only enclosure. The event was already thronged with people, most of whom were as sensibly and plainly garbed as Harriet, in anticipation of the muddy conditions.
    As she waited for Tailwind to be unboxed, several men nearby in a huddle were talking nineteen to the dozen. As with Fergal, it took her a moment or two to be able to distinguish clear words in the colourful lilt and flow of the musical Kerry accent.
    ‘So Martin the vet’s trying to see to Flynn’s mare that’s in foal while the model woman is spreading herself across the stable wall like she’s on one of those pop videos…you know, those ones they ban. And she’s wearing a very short dress,’ someone reported in an urgent whisper, ‘And what does Flynn say? He only tells the hussy to go and get someclothes on before she frightens the horse! Isn’t he the
man?
’ was the conclusion, in a tone of deep envy and near reverence.
    Her face hot, Harriet moved hurriedly out of earshot. Across the field she saw Rafael Flynn’s girlfriend emerge from a big powerful four-wheel-drive. Garbed in a purely fashionable fitted tweed hacking jacket and pure white riding breeches that were skin tight, the leggy blonde moved as though she was on a catwalk, and looked so spectacular that everyone stopped dead to stare at her.
    But Harriet’s attention flew straight past her to the tall dark male striding towards the paddock: Rafael Flynn himself. His height and carriage picked him out from the crowd. The breeze had ruffled his luxuriant hair into jet-black spikes. His lean, sculpted face was very bronzed against the light sweater he wore below an outdoor jacket so cool in cut it could only have been of Italian design.
    Someone cannoned into Harriet and, caught unprepared, she lurched backwards into the deep muddy tracks forged by some heavy vehicle and fell.
    ‘I’m so sorry…I didn’t see you. Are you hurt?’ A burly older man was reaching down to help her up again.
    Harriet glanced at the mud liberally staining herjacket and jeans and then she laughed and shrugged. ‘No, I’m fine…luckily I’m fully washable.’
    From about thirty feet away Rafael watched the surprisingly good-natured exchange. Most of the women he knew would have been screaming the place down. Harriet’s instant smile seemed designed to reassure the clumsy idiot who had sent her flying that being tipped into the mud had been a fun experience for her. Right on cue, Bianca approached him to lament the dirt now spattering her highly polished leather boots. The diamond choker he had given her as a farewell gift glittered at her swan-like throat. Within a few hours she would be boarding her flight home to Belgium. She dug out a little hand mirror to check her hair and the temptation was too much for her: she succumbed to studying herself from every angle. Crushing boredom assailed him and he walked away without her noticing.
    ‘I wonder what Rafael Flynn is doing here,’ Fergal mused as he accompanied Harriet over to the paddock with his gelding. ‘He doesn’t often appear at local meetings.’
    Keen punters were lining the fence, eager for a look at the