Midnight Faith. Gena Dalton

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СКАЧАТЬ with anger and regret. She had no business even saying it—it sounded strange in her northern accent.

      “Always one for a little family tradition, huh, Cait?”

      Quick, deep hurt showed in her big dark eyes. It wiped her smile away.

      Guilt tugged at him. He was never one to be deliberately cruel and he’d spoken before he thought. Cait was practically an orphan—she had no family traditions of her own.

      She was tough, though, this Irish girl from Chicago. A little hurt would never damage her confidence.

      “Yes. Ever since I fell in love with your brother I’ve been into the traditions of this family.”

      She gave him that straight look of hers that dared him to contradict her.

      “I’m a McMahan, too, Clint, whether you like it or not.”

      He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t a blessed thing he could do about it.

      From the instant she got back into her truck and turned the key in the ignition, Cait wouldn’t let herself think beyond the moment at hand. Not one second beyond it.

      The night was beginning to lighten from true black to a hint of gray as she put the gearshift into Reverse and backed away from the indoor arena. While she pulled out into the paved street and drove past the west end of the barn, she watched the sky in her rearview mirror, waiting for the first glow of pink to prove that the day truly was coming.

      Her eyes burned with fatigue and so did her heart, but she wasn’t going to think about that now. Not right now. She was unloading her new horses into their new home and after that she’d think about whatever was next.

      The security lights scattered over the ranch were still bright against the darkness, and when she’d reached the barn farthest from the other buildings she parked under the light beside its door. Just get them out and comfortably settled, that was all she had to do. Throw them their alfalfa and get them some water.

      Suddenly even that seemed like too much to contemplate. Her limbs felt too shaky to do anything.

      Cait set her brake and turned on the lights inside the trailer. She’d driven longer trips than this with no more frequent stops than she’d made tonight. She’d hauled Roy’s horses all the way to Ohio to the Quarter Horse Congress, nearly twenty-four hours with no relief driver and no sleep.

      Exhaustion wasn’t her problem.

      What was the problem?

      She snapped her mind away from that next logical thought and got out of the truck. Not allowing so much as a pause to reach back inside for her canvas coat, she headed for the trailer. She’d work fast enough to keep warm in just her fleece jacket.

      “You are some fine travelers,” she said as she opened the narrow door and stepped up inside, “with, perhaps, an exception here and there. Which one of you has been kicking the side?”

      The sight of the nice horses, not great, but plenty good, sound horses—her horses—strengthened her. For all these years, she’d never legally owned a horse, and now she owned seven. Today or tomorrow, Christmas or not, she’d get all the registration paperwork ready to mail. She couldn’t wait to see her name on those official papers.

      She let down the padded strap across the rear of the short, roan horse and untied his head.

      “I only hope I’m not making a big mistake unloading you here,” she confided as she backed him out, “but I can’t go somewhere else now. If I find another location for my school, Clint will think he ran me off and he’ll only be harder to deal with next time.”

      And there would be a next time, because she was not giving up her rights to be on this ranch. For one thing, the rent money she’d pay somewhere else for facilities could be better spent on more horses for more disadvantaged kids and then for an assistant as their numbers grew.

      This school was what the Lord had laid upon her heart and this was what she had to do to the very best of her ability. Her memorial to John would be this school, which would have two purposes: to introduce troubled teenagers to horses and to faith in God.

      When Clint knew that, he’d change his attitude. At least, he’d change it a little.

      So why hadn’t she told him that at once?

      She tried to puzzle out the answer as she led the roan into the barn and into the first stall, slipped his halter off and then left him, to get some bags of shavings from the trailer. Maybe it was because she wanted him to acknowledge her right to use the ranch. Maybe it was because she wanted him to know that Bobbie Ann had every right to make decisions, too.

      Maybe it was because she wanted Clint to accept her as a person and not only because of John.

      That was close.

      It was because she wanted him to see her as a woman, not as his brother’s wife.

      Chapter Two

      All he had to do was simply not think of Cait as a woman.

      Impatiently Clint popped the shine cloth across the toe of his right boot one more time, put that foot to the floor and set his left one up onto the woven-bark footstool. It was stupid that he’d ever even noticed that she was a woman, anyhow.

      She was his brother’s wife—widow or not—for heaven’s sake! She was forward and stubborn and she had no tact whatsoever in any situation. He didn’t have the slightest interest in her.

      Except, of course, as to how her cockeyed school was going to impact his ranch operations. He popped the cloth in the air and then pulled it vigorously across his already-shiny left boot.

      He snorted. Her staying out of everybody’s way and using only the old outdoor pen was nothing but a pipe dream. Just let the temperature go above a hundred, let the wind blow dust in their eyes at forty miles an hour, and Caitlin and her little-rich-girl clients would be cluttering up the indoor arena from one end to the other. They’d turn the whole place upside down and probably drive his trainers so crazy they’d quit.

      And that kind of trouble he did not need—especially not now, when he was making so many decisions about the ranch and its future. He absolutely would not lose two top trainers who were winning at all the big shows and bringing attention and dollars to the ranch.

      What he would do was find a way to get Cait’s silly school off this ranch and to another location as soon as humanly possible. He’d talk to Bobbie Ann and start pushing for that just as soon as Christmas was over.

      He could see his face in his boot, so he threw the rag back into the wooden box and went to wash his hands before he touched his white shirt. It was time to go downstairs and get on with this poor excuse for a Christmas Eve. Dad, John and Monte all being absent was an unbearable thought, especially for the late-night hot-chocolate family time, and Caitlin’s presence was the icing on the cake. As if he didn’t have enough to think about!

      All he wanted was to get this Christmas over with.

      Tonight he would simply look at Caitlin as a sister-in-law, exactly as he did Darcy, Jackson’s new wife. That was the one bright spot of the СКАЧАТЬ