After the Kiss by Suzanne Enoch

she didn’t back away. Well, well. Unless a horse was involved, apparently nothing scared her at all. Even him.
    “Your mother is a painter, then,” she continued finally.
    “ Was a painter,” he corrected. “She died a year ago.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “So am I.” He changed the tension on the lead line. “Walk on,” he instructed, tickling at the mare’s foreleg. With a hopping step she stopped, then continued forward again at a walk. “Good girl,” he murmured. Not bad at all for a first attempt.
    “And so your father truly is Lord Dunston.”
    Damnation . She was like a hound with a bone. “Leave it be,” he said aloud.
    “No. I’m deciphering you.”
    Sullivan glanced over his shoulder at her. “I think that would be a great deal of effort for very little reward.”
    “Are you older or younger than Oliver?”
    “Do you ever mind your own business?”
    “You are my business. I’m blackmailing you, remember?”
    Good God . He sighed, his amusement growing nearly to match his annoyance. “I’m eight months younger.”
    “You must hate them,” she said quietly. “Growing up knowing—”
    He snorted. “Until five months ago they barely crossed my mind.”
    “Why is that? I mean, obviously Lord Dunston hasn’t acknowledged you. So—”
    “Whoa, Zephyr.” Keeping the mare standing and half angry at himself for still not wanting Isabel to be frightened, he stalked up to her. “My secrets for yours,” he murmured.
    Isabel backed up a step. “What?”
    “You heard me.”
    “I don’t have any secrets.” She folded her arms. “Except for the one I’m keeping on your behalf.”
    “And you’re enjoying that one, aren’t you?”
    Her cheeks darkened. “I beg your pardon?”
    “People who don’t like secrets don’t keep them, and they certainly don’t explore them.”
    “I—”
    “If you manage to touch Zephyr tomorrow,” he interrupted, knowing he’d already won the point, “I’ll tell you something about myself. The more progress you make with her, the more you’ll discover about me.”
    She glared at him, her gaze slipping to the mare and back again. “What if the information, as you said, isn’t worth the trouble?”
    “That’s for you to decide, I suppose.”
    “I could make you tell me everything right now,” she continued, assuming the defiant stance she’d tried with him before.
    “Not unless I let you.” In most instances he could read people as easily as he did horses. Her, he hadn’t quite figured out yet, but he was fairly confident about this. “You could try, of course. But that would mean giving up your hold over me, Isabel. And I think we both know you don’t wish to do that.”
    As she pursed her lips, Sullivan’s gaze lowered to her mouth. Abruptly he wondered whether Oliver had ever kissed her. Swift anger and frustration swept up his spine, and he clenched his jaw against it. She was a marquis’ daughter. What Oliver had or hadn’t done didn’t signify, because Oliver Sullivan was within his rights to pursue her. Sullivan Waring was the one training her horse.
    “Get back to your work, then. And it’s still Lady Isabel,” she said, walking over to stand where both of her brothers now watched. Apparently, then, she’d come to the same realization. A well-respected horse breeder he might be, but he was still ankle-deep in horse shit.
    Fine. What the devil did he care, anyway, as long as she kept her silence about his nocturnal visit here earlier in the week? “As you wish.” With a word and a flick of the whip he started Zephyr forward again. He didn’t care. Not one bloody bit. And if she never approached a horse again, he would still have done what he’d been hired to do. Nothing less, and not one damned thing more.
    Twenty minutes later he led Zephyr back into the stable. Turning down the multiple offers from the stableboys, he fed and watered the mare himself. At his own stables he had employees to take on mundane tasks like this