The blue light from the phone screen felt like poison to Alesya’s eyes.
Outside the temporary quarantine tent at the Palm Beach Equestrian Center, the coastal night wind blew fiercely, shaking the thick canvas tarp with noisy flaps and carrying the cold, salty scent of the sea.
It was ten o’clock at night.
Most of the venue lights had been extinguished, leaving only pale yellow security spotlights stretching down the stable aisle.
Alesya sat on a wooden toolbox next to Phantom’s stall.
The black horse had finished his dinner, standing calmly with one hind leg relaxed, chewing the remaining dry hay in a soothing rhythm.
But inside Alesya’s head, there was no peace at all.
Her finger kept scrolling through the comment section under a breaking article just uploaded by the biggest equestrian gossip account on Instagram: @PalmBeachPaddockTalk.
A photo from the arrival corridor earlier that afternoon was clearly displayed there.
The angle was cruel.
Revan’s sturdy body pinning her against the concrete wall, his arm wrapped around her waist, and their faces almost touching above Phantom’s mane.
Below the photo, a bold headline read in capital letters:
THE DARK RIDER’S NEW SECRET?
WHO IS THE FOREIGN VET BEHIND PHANTOM’S RETURN?
And the comment section was a mud pit destroying her entire self-worth:
“Just some local vet from a nowhere clinic in Ocala.
Clearly trying to latch onto Revan before the Ashworth wedding.”
“Victoria Ashworth is too classy to care about a horse groom like her.”
“I heard she had a bad record in Colombia before fleeing to Florida.
Why did Caldwell hire a woman like this?”
That last comment stabbed right into Alesya’s stomach.
A bad record in Colombia.
Sebastián.
Alesya knew whose fingerprints were behind those words.
Sebastián Montero had started his campaign.
Using social media and his elite connections to plant seeds of poison before Alesya could prove her integrity in the Grand Prix arena.
Alesya took a sharp, trembling breath.
Her fingertips turned ice cold.
The insecurity she had buried for two years in America crept back up, choking her throat.
In the world of people like Revan, Victoria, and Sebastián… a world where money and connections wrote the truth… a girl from a small coffee plantation in Bogotá would always be the sacrificial lamb.
“Reading internet trash won’t lower Phantom’s muscle temperature, Dr.
Vargas.”
A large, warm, rough-skinned hand suddenly snatched the phone from Alesya’s grip.
Alesya jumped in shock.
She leaped up from the wooden box, her hands reflexively reaching out to grab her phone back.
“Give it back, Revan!”
Revan stood in front of her.
The man wasn’t at the charity dinner at the Palm Beach Club.
He had shed his stiff competition shirt.
Revan wore only a thin black cotton t-shirt that fit his body perfectly, dusty dark jodhpurs, and an unbuttoned Caldwell Equestrian team jacket made of thick wool and black leather.
The man’s face looked hard.
His jawline was locked tight, and his pair of gray eyes glowed darkly as he read the three lines of comments on Alesya’s still-lit phone screen.
Revan read the comments about “horse groom” and “bad record in Colombia.”
Alesya saw how Revan’s pupils dilated with pure anger.
The veins on the man’s temples bulged instantly.
CRACK.
Revan’s thumb pressed the edge of the phone so hard the screen protector nearly cracked.
“Who allowed them to write this?” Revan’s voice dropped to a very dangerous low growl.
“It’s the internet, Revan,” Alesya whispered bitterly, trying to snatch her phone back, but Revan held his hand high, out of the woman’s reach.
“People are free to write whatever they want.”
“Not about you.”
Revan turned off the phone screen with a rough jerk, then shoved it into his own pants pocket.
The man stepped forward.
One step that forced Alesya to retreat until her back pressed against the wooden door of Phantom’s stall.
Revan caged the woman in.
The scent of cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and the cold night air radiated densely from Revan’s body, drowning out the antiseptic smell around them.
Revan’s gray eyes stared straight into Alesya’s honey-brown pupils, which shimmered wetly with hidden pain.
“You’re letting the words of nameless cowards poison your mind?” Revan whispered sharply, his voice saturated with burning anger… not at Alesya, but at the entire world daring to hurt this woman.
“They aren’t entirely wrong, Revan!” Alesya hissed, her voice cracking from the pain she had held back since the afternoon.
“I’m not part of your world.
I don’t have a big family name.
I don’t have fifty million dollars.
And in their eyes, I’m just an opportunistic woman ruining your golden engagement!”
“Fuck that engagement!” Revan cut in roughly.
Revan’s right hand moved lightning fast, gripping Alesya’s jaw with his warm, strong fingers.
It wasn’t a painful grip.
It was a touch that forced Alesya to look up, forcing the woman to stare straight into his eyes filled with wild intensity.
“You are not anyone’s servant, Alesya,” Revan whispered right in front of the woman’s face.
The man’s hot breath swept over Alesya’s cold lips.
“You are the only person who managed to make that fifty-million-dollar horse jump again after eight months of hell.
You are more talented, braver, and a hundred times more valuable than all the hypocritical socialites in that VIP tent!”
Alesya’s heart pounded wildly behind her ribs.
The man’s words hit her defenses like a sledgehammer, burning away the inferiority that had paralyzed her.
Alesya looked into Revan’s eyes.
There was no billionaire falseness there.
Only a man ready to burn all of Wellington to protect her honor.
Suddenly, the coastal night wind blew hard through the gaps in the quarantine tent canvas.
The air temperature dropped drastically.
Alesya shivered unconsciously.
Her body, wrapped only in a thin olive silk shirt, trembled slightly under the blast of Florida’s cold air.
Revan noticed the tremor instantly.
The man’s eyes softened, the anger on his face melting into an intimacy so profound it made Alesya’s throat choke.
Revan slowly released the woman’s jaw.
Without a single word, Revan raised his hands to his own shoulders.
He took off the thick, heavy Caldwell Equestrian team jacket from his body.
Before Alesya could refuse, Revan stepped one inch closer.
The man spread his black leather and wool jacket, then draped it over Alesya’s petite shoulders.
The touch enveloped Alesya’s body completely.
Revan’s jacket was too big for her.
The wool fabric still retained Revan’s burning body heat.
And his scent—
Revan’s dense masculine scent, a mix of expensive leather, fresh bergamot, male sweat, and the man’s unique aroma… instantly surrounded Alesya’s entire body like an invisible physical embrace.
Alesya held her breath.
Revan didn’t pull his hands away immediately.
The man’s hands remained on the jacket collar beside Alesya’s neck.
Revan’s rough fingers smoothed the thick wool fabric around the woman’s nape, letting the backs of his fingers brush against Alesya’s smooth, warm neck skin.
The skin-to-skin contact sent an electric shock racing quickly down Alesya’s spine, making her knees suddenly weak.
Revan’s face was right in front of hers.
Very close.
So close that Alesya could see fragments of dark gray in Revan’s dilated pupils swallowing the dim light.
“Wear this,” Revan whispered hoarsely near Alesya’s ear.
The man’s voice was so low and raspy, vibrating with desire he had to restrain half to death.
“The night in Palm Beach is too cold for your thin skin.”
Alesya swallowed, her throat parched.
Her fingers instinctively gripped the man’s jacket collar at her chest, pulling Revan’s warmth and scent tighter against her body.
“Revan…” Alesya whispered, her voice almost a sigh amidst the rustling night wind.
“This jacket…
has your name on the back.
People will see.”
Revan stared at the woman’s ripe lips, which were wet and trembling violently under his gaze.
The corner of the man’s lips lifted into a thin, dark, dangerous smirk saturated with absolute possession.
“Let them see, Alesya,” Revan whispered right above the woman’s lips.
The man’s hot breath burned the skin of Alesya’s mouth for one torturous second, before Revan slowly stepped back into the shadows of the aisle.
Revan didn’t turn to leave.
The man stood there, three steps in front of Alesya, his thin black t-shirt revealing the contours of his chest and shoulder muscles in the cold night air.
Revan’s gray eyes looked Alesya up and down.
Watching how his luxurious black jacket wrapped around the woman’s petite body, how the jacket collar rested on Alesya’s slender neck, and how his scent had now fully marked the woman.
The gaze was so hungry.
So naked.
And so laden with promises of forbidden destruction that made Alesya’s entire body tremble violently down to her toes.
Alesya clutched the man’s jacket tighter against her chest.
And in the windy silence of the Palm Beach night…
Alesya realized one truth that crushed all her sanity:
She was wearing this man’s jacket.
She had breathed his scent into her lungs.
And nothing in this world could save her heart from the man named Revan Caldwell anymore.