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busied herself with her helmet and crop and walked into the ring beside him, thinking this was really unnecessary. It wasn’t as if they’d just won the World Cup. Owners—even overbearing ones like Tully Haskell—didn’t get their pictures taken with their riders for winning at schooling shows.
    Relax, Alex. Just get it over with, and you can go home to Isabella.
    “Where’s the trophy?” Carter Hill asked, camera in hand as he looked toward the judge’s stand where some sort of commotion was taking place among the half-dozen people gathered there.
    Suddenly Christian Atherton emerged from the mob with a triumphant look on his face and a small gold cup in his hands. His steady gaze zoomed in on Alex, magnetism turned up full beam. She froze, mesmerized, amazed. It seemed inconceivable that he could elicit such a response from her with so little effort. That he could excite her, and the excitement made her afraid.
    “I’ve been given the great honor of presenting you with your prize, Ms. Gianni,” he said smoothly, wedging himself neatly between her and Haskell. The truth of the matter was he had wrested the trophy away from a nine-year-old girl and then consoled her with a bribe of a dollar. Low but effective.
    “That’s mine, Atherton,” Tully said with all the sulky impudence of a spoiled child. He reached for the cup with greedy hands.
    Christian grinned brilliantly as Carter Hill shot a picture. “Then here you are, Mr. Haskell.” And may you choke on it , he silently added.
    He turned his smile back toward Alex. “Congratulations.”
    “Thank you,” she said, quelling the juvenile urge to thumb her nose at him. “I guess Terminator and I get along well enough.”
    “Yes,” Christian said, his own teasing temper responding to the fiery lights in her amber eyes as well as to the challenging tilt of her chin. Gads but she was lovely! That inner flame he had caught glimpses of in the stables burned bright now. She was too caught up in the heady sense of victory to try to suppress it as she had before. He flicked a finger down the short slope of her nose and watched the golden sparks shoot off in her eyes. “Perhaps you can have him ready for the fall steeplechase season.”
    “Plenty of time for us to win a grand prix or two before then,” Alex replied tartly, surprised to realize that she enjoyed sparring with Christian. Her blood was racing in much the same way it did when she was soaring over fences on a fast, powerful horse.
    Haskell grunted and hugged his cup to his belly. “See there, hotshot. She’ll give you a run for your money.”
    Christian went on staring down into Alex’s amber eyes, reading a rich mix of emotions in their sparkling depths, and he felt his blood heat in answer. His gaze slid to the pouty curve of her lower lip, and a lazy smile curled one corner of his mouth as desire curled low and tight in his groin. “I dare say she will,” he murmured silkily.
    “Just one more picture, folks?” Carter Hill said, raising his camera.
    Tully lifted his trophy and bared his teeth. Alex looked up at Christian, unable to look away. And Christian leaned down and kissed her just as the shutter clicked.
    A languid warmth flowed through Alex, swirling first through her head then downward, washing all physical strength with it. It wasn’t much of an effort as far as kisses went. It wasn’t aggressive or even intimate. It was merely a taste, a brushing of his firm lips over hers. And still it made her weak and dizzy.
    Alex told herself it was the shock. She hadn’t been kissed in a long time. She hadn’t allowed a man near enough to accomplish the task. Christian hadn’t asked permission. He’d simply seized the moment and kissed her as if he had every right to.
    He didn’t have the right. His presumptuousness triggered an old flame of anger, and her own guilt at having enjoyed the kiss for an instant poured gasoline on the fire. She pulled back and slapped him, spewing out a