Mr. Miracle. Carolyn McSparren

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СКАЧАТЬ You have about thirty minutes to ride before we have to turn on the lights in the arena. If you can ride to suit me, and if you’re willing to sleep in the groom’s room behind the hayloft and work like a navvy on anything and everything I put you to, then...”

      “Then, lass?”

      She held out her right hand. “Then we shake on it.”

      This time he was the one caught off guard. He pulled his wounded hand in its black glove out of his jeans pocket and extended it.

      Looking resolutely into his eyes, Vic took his mangled hand and shook it. “After that,” she said, “it’s boss-lass to you, laddie.”

      As they passed the office door, the telephone rang. “Oh, bother,” Vic said. “Look, go pick a horse—any horse you like. You’ll find a clean saddle pad in the tack room and there’s a saddle you can use on the wash rack. I’ll find you a bridle when I get there.”

      “That’s all right. I brought my own saddle on the back of the motorcycle.”

      She nodded as she answered the telephone.

      “Vic, it’s Kevin.”

      “Kevin, how is Angie?”

      “Arm in a sling, mad as a wet hen that she’s let you down, depressed as hell and half-drunk on dope.” He sounded almost bitter. “I should have called yesterday, but I had three babies to deliver.”

      It didn’t sound like Kevin at all. He was known to all and sundry as Saint Kevin, Angie’s obstetrician/gynecologist husband who provided Angie with unlimited funds, supported her at every turn and never lost his cool no matter how exasperating she became.

      “I’m so sorry it happened, Kevin.”

      “She says it was her fault. Not thinking.” He snorted. “Thinking too damned much is more like it.”

      “Oh?”

      Vic heard his sigh down the phone lines. “Sorry, Vic, got to go. Angie’ll be out sometime tomorrow to pick up her car.” He hung up.

      Vic sat with her hand on the receiver. Now what was that about? Trouble in paradise?

      Maybe that was why Angie had fallen off a horse that normally would not have been able to buck off a four-year-old child.

      Well, Vic thought, pulling herself up, it was none of her business. She had enough on her plate without playing marriage counselor to Kevin and Angie. She went to find Jamey McLachlan.

      Angie Womack’s big jumper, Trust Fund, stood on the wash rack with his saddle in place, but Jamey was nowhere to be found. Vic listened for the sound of his footsteps and heard...nothing. Even Mr. Miracle had gone silent. Good Lord! Surely the man had sense enough not to mess with a strange stallion, especially one the size of an eighteen-wheeler.

      She ran outside toward the stallion paddock. If that damned man had gotten himself trampled to death, she’d kill him.

      In the gathering twilight she saw them, so black that only Jamey’s olive skin glowed in the twilight. She stood still and watched. The stallion—all nineteen hands and two thousand pounds of him—leaned against Jamey, his huge head drooped and braced against Jamey’s knee, his eyes half-closed in ecstasy as Jamey scratched behind his ears as though the horse were some kind of big puppy.

      Under his breath Jamey whistled softly, some strange Celtic melody that seemed to flow from his bones and into the stallion’s. Vic felt the sound melt into her as well and shivered with it.

      He raised his head, saw her, stopped his whistling and smiled into her eyes. “Shall I bring this big lad in for you, lass? Ah...boss-lass?”

      “If you wouldn’t mind,” Vic said. “His lead line is on the gate hook. I’ll give you a hand.”

      “No need. I’ve got it.”

      “You’d better hook the chain over his nose. He’s a handful.”

      “He’s just a big old boy. Gentle as a buffalo.” Jamey picked up the end of the shank and walked beside the stallion’s shoulder with the shank hanging loosely from his hand. The stallion behaved almost like a hound at heel.

      Vic opened the gate and stood aside. She watched man and horse wander by. The stallion held his nose against the man’s shoulder.

      “Come on, old son,” Jamey murmured. “Time to settle in for the night.” Vic followed at a safe distance until the stallion moved meekly into his stall and turned around to bump Jamey gently with his muzzle.

      “Now be quiet,” Jamey said. “You’ll get your dinner soon enough. And the girls when you’re ready for them.”

      “That’s amazing.”

      “It’s a gift. I’ve always had it. Animals like me. Don’t know why. Now, shall we try that big gelding over a few fences?”

      Vic nodded.

      After watching him work the big jumper for forty-five minutes under lights in the newly covered arena, Vic knew she’d found her exercise rider.

      Later they walked the aisle silently side by side feeding, haying and filling water buckets. Vic felt as though she’d known this man all her life.

      He was handsome as Lucifer himself. She could practically smell the pheromones he exuded. He undoubtedly had scores of beautiful younger women falling all over him. To him she was no doubt only an employer, but she was aware of him, his maleness, in a way she had never been with any man. Certainly not with her deceased husband. Given Frank’s nature, his size and his irascibility, that wasn’t surprising.

      There was an aura of raw sexuality about Jamey McLachlan. He was like the stallion, except that his calls were silent. Whatever he had, she had tuned into it, even though she should be too old and wise a mare to go into heat the minute an attractive stallion nickered at her.

      If she wasn’t very very careful, she would wind up making a fool of herself.

      

      HE SLID THE EMPTY HAY cart into the storage area and turned to her. “So, where’s this groom’s room? I could use a shower. Must smell like a goat.”

      Actually, Vic thought, he smelled of male sweat and dust, not at all a bad scent. “Up the ladder, I’m afraid. Behind the hayloft. We haven’t used it since our last working student a couple of years ago. It’ll be pretty filthy.”

      “Let’s see. Show me?”

      Vic reached for the ladder to the loft and pulled herself up, all too aware of the seat of her dusty jeans rising to his eye level and above. She climbed as quickly as she could, stepping off onto the hay platform fenced off from the main floor with a barrier to keep children and pets from falling—her new nephew-in-law’s idea. She flicked the light switch on the wall, revealing neat bales of hay stacked to the ceiling.

      She felt him behind her before she turned to look at him.

      He hooked his thumbs into his waistband. His injured hand hung at an awkward angle.

      Vic СКАЧАТЬ