"DEAD HEAT"

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Walking across the Keeneland paddock area, Doyle McCoy spotted Ashleigh Scott mincing her way across the paddock area in too-high yellow heels the exact shade of her too-wide-brimmed yellow straw hat. Doyle couldn't help himself. He stepped directly in front of her and grinned, his gaze fastening on the small mole below the left corner of her mouth. "Why, Ash, darlin', don't you look pretty as a picture." Her obliging smile was a mere shade away from feral. He knew she hated the nickname he'd given her as a kid—she was Ashleigh or Leigh, depending on which side of the racetrack was doing the calling. He also knew she'd prefer he drop off the face of the earth rather than call her anything at all. "Why, Doyle McCoy, how nice to see you." Nice indicating he belonged in the earth with the rest of the worms. Any Kentucky woman worth her salt could sound like she was lavishing a man with compliments while grinding him under her dainty heel. "I noticed Wind Racer has a couple of horses running today." Wind Racer Farm being the Scott legacy, which, as an only child, Leigh would someday inherit from her mother Vanessa. "Yes, the Blue Grass Stakes is the highlight of the day, of course. But I do have a filly in this next race, and I wouldn't think of missing Dancing Dawn win." Her thick dark hair was pulled back from her fine features and gathered with a purple ribbon at the nape of her long, graceful neck that tempted a man's lips to assault of the very personal kind. Not his lips, though. He and Ashleigh Scott had disrespected and disavowed each other for as long as Doyle could remember, starting sometime after he'd put an end to her romantic schoolgirl yearnings.