"Roberts, Nora - Irish Hearts 3 - Irish Rebel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

"That's the right answer. So, Brian, does Royal Meadows suit you?''
After drying his hands, he crossed to the table to sit. "Yes, ma'am."
"Oh, we're not so very formal around here. You don't have to ma'am me. Unless you're in trouble." She poured tea for him, and coffee for Travis, then stayed where she was, her free hand resting on her husband's shoulder.
"How did Zeus do this morning?"
"Took the oval in a minute-fifty flat."
"I'm sorry I missed it." She turned back to the stove to heap golden bread onto a platter.
"I'll offer you a one-year contract," Travis began.
"Can't you let the boy eat before you talk business?"
"The boy wants to know."
Brian took the platter, transferred three slices to his plate. "Yes, he does."
"You'll have a guaranteed annual salary." Travis named an amount that had Brian struggling not to bobble the syrup. "And, after two months, a two-percent share of each purse. In six months, we'll renegotiate that percentage."
"We'll negotiate it up." Steady again, Brian cut into his breakfast. "Because I promise you, I'll have earned it."
They discussed-haggled a bit for form sake-responsibilities, benefits, bonuses, duties.
Brian was on his second serving of toast, and Travis the last of his coffee, when Keeley came in.
She wore buff colored jodhpurs. Elegant and form-fitting. Her high black boots were shined like dark mirrors. Her white blouse draped soft with its wide collar buttoned high. She had tamed her hair into a sleek twist that left her face unframed. Small, complicated twists of gold glinted at her ears.
Her brow lifted at the sight of Brian eating breakfast in her kitchen, and her mouth thinned before it moved into a cool, practiced smile. "Good morning, Mr. Donnelly."
"Miss Grant."
"I'm pressed for time this morning." She walked to her father, bent down, rubbed her cheek against his.
"You should eat," her mother told her.
"I'll get something later." She went to the refrigerator, took out a soft drink. "I'll be done in a couple of hours." She went to her mother, bending first to scratch Sheamus on the top of the head, then in the same manner she'd used with her father, rubbed cheeks with Adelia before she headed out the back door.
"I'll come down in a bit," Adelia called after her. "I'd like to watch."
Twenty minutes later, Brian walked from the house toward the trainer's quarters. He saw Keeley in the paddock in front of the small building. She sat astride a black gelding. As she walked the horse, a man photographed her from various angles.
Brian paused to watch, hands on hips. She was getting her picture in some fancy magazine, he imagined. Royal Meadows Princess. No doubt she'd look fine and glossy in it.
She set the horse into a trot, then a canter, swinging in to sail over a jump. Brian's lips pursed. She had good form, he had to admit it. When she repeated that jump, then another, for the camera, he heard her laugh float out over the air.
He turned away, dismissing her. Trying to.
He climbed the stairs to the trainer's quarters, knocked.
"Come in, and welcome. In here," Paddy called out.
He sat at a desk in a room set up as an office. File cabinets lined one wall, and photographs of horses lined them all. The window was open, and on a shelf beside it sat a computer. If the dust on its cover was any indication, it was rarely, if ever, used.
Paddy's glasses balanced on the end of his nose as he gestured to a chair. "You and Travis worked out your details."
"We did. He's a fair man."
"Did you expect otherwise?"
"I don't expect anything from owners, and that way they don't often surprise me."
With a chuckle Paddy shoved up his glasses, scratched his nose. "This one might."
"I want to thank you for putting my name in so Mr. Grant would consider me."
"I've kept my eye and ear on things, though I've retired. Well, retired twice now, if the truth be known, and come out of it again as Travis and Dee haven't been satisfied with the trainers who've come along. This time I mean it to stick. I mean you to stick, boy."
When his glasses slid down again, Paddy grunted in annoyance and took them off. "We'll be bunking here together, if you have no objection, for the next week. After that, I'll be off, and the place is yours."
"Where are you going?"
"Home. Back to Ireland."
"After all these years?"
"I was born there. I've a mind to die there-though I've life left in me, no mistake. I've a yearning to spend the last years of it at home."
"What'll you do there?"
"Oh, go to the pub to tell lies," Paddy said with a twinkling grin. "Drink a pint of decent Guinness. You'll miss that here, I can tell you. It's just not the same built out of a Yank tap."
Brian had to laugh. "It's a long way to go for a pint, even for Guinness."
"Well now, there's a little farm in the south of Cork, not far from Skibbereen. Do you know Skibbereen, Brian?"
"Aye. It's a pretty town."
"Sloping streets and painted doorways," Paddy said, a bit dreamily. "Well, the farm's a bit of a ways from that pretty town. My Dee was raised there, by my sister after Dee's parents died. When my sister got sickly, the farm fell on hard times with Dee trying to run it and tend to her aunt Lettie. In the end, Lettie passed and the farm was lost, and Dee came here to me. A few years ago, the farm came up for sale, and though she told him not to, Travis bought it for her. The man knows her heart."
"So that's where you're going?" Brian asked, though he didn't have a clue why Paddy was telling him. "To be a farmer?"
"That's where I'm going, but I don't think I'll make much of a farmer. I'll have myself a few horses for company."
He shifted, turned his gaze to the window and the hills beyond where horses grazed in the late-morning sunshine.
"I'll miss my little Dee, and Travis, and the children. The friends I've made here. But I've a need to go. An itch, if you follow me."