Читать книгу Mr. Miracle - Carolyn McSparren - Страница 10

CHAPTER FOUR

“BLOODY HELL!”

Jamey trotted up the hill toward Vic’s cottage with both dogs trundling along behind him. The last thing he needed was a woman who had full-blown panic attacks, no matter how much he enjoyed her company.

Liz Whitten wouldn’t be back with her new husband and child for two whole months.

Unless one of ValleyCrest’s boarders was an extraordinary rider—doubtful, judging from the rest of the horses he’d seen at ValleyCrest—Vic Jamerson was the only one who had experience on a horse like Roman. All right, so it had been a few years.

The woman had ridden with the U.S. equestrian team, for pity’s sake. The caliber of talent international competition required didn’t vanish with age.

He’d never find another rider with her sort of experience within a radius of five hundred miles. Even if he did, no way could he insinuate a stranger onto the stallion’s back.

Jamey was nearly convinced that Mr. Miracle was Roman. He couldn’t be entirely sure until he’d seen the horse put through his paces by another rider—a good one. He had to be able to assess the horse’s movements, temperament, and flair.

No doubt Whitten had gotten papers on the horse’s breeding from the farmer in Germany who had sold him. The papers were forged of course, but that might be difficult to prove. Jamey might never be able to trace every step the colt had taken from the moment he’d disappeared from Oban until he’d wound up on a nameless breeding farm in Wurtheim, Germany.

How could Jamey explain to Whitten or even to Vic that he’d spent the past two years searching the world for Roman? Or that he’d arrived in Belgium to check out a friend’s tip about a horse that might be his Roman only a day after Whitten had loaded the horse on an air transport for quarantine in Kentucky? What evidence did he have that would stand up against papers and a bill of sale? How could he tell anybody that Mr. Miracle was in reality Jock McLachlan’s foundation stallion?

Better to keep his mouth shut. At least until he was a hundred percent certain of his facts.

Vic said she couldn’t ride? The hell she couldn’t!

“Nonsense!” he said aloud. “I need her, dammit, and I need her in the saddle.” He slammed through the house, dug through her refrigerator until he found a diet soda and half a pound or so of ham. He took bread from the bread-box, spread it with butter, slid in several pieces of ham and wrapped the whole thing in a paper towel. As he started out the door, he remembered that Americans liked mayonnaise and mustard on their sandwiches, not butter. Well, at seven-thirty in the morning, butter would have to do.

As he walked down the hill, a picture of Vic flying across the pastures on Roman came unbidden into his mind. What he’d give to see that. She’d be beautiful with the wind in her hair, that wide mouth of hers laughing...

Damnation. He needed to keep his mind on business.

Until he’d probed the people at the quarantine station in Kentucky for information, the only thing Jamey knew about ValleyCrest Stables was that the stallion had been sent there, ostensibly for training.

Once Jamey discovered the horse’s final destination, he’d actually had to call three acquaintances in Europe before he found one who knew the owner of ValleyCrest. Vic Jamerson. The name was vaguely familiar, but it took some time to make the connection to Victoria Jamerson. Plenty of riders had come and gone in the intervening years, and her career had been mysteriously short.

He’d had to do some fast toe-tapping to conceal the fact that his only interest was in that single stable—not the others he’d requested letters to.

Thank God Marshall Dunn was the least curious man he’d ever met and not overly swift when it came to anything other than racehorses.

Jamie smiled to himself and shook his head at the memory of the way he had manipulated Marshall.

He was well aware that Marshall considered him “not quite out of the top drawer, don’tcha know?” Good enough to train his problem racehorses, but not good enough to invite to Dunn House for a weekend party.

That should have made Jamey feel a bit better about pulling the wool over the man’s eyes. Marshall was, after all, the stereotypical gaja, the sort of man who, in an earlier century, might have driven Jamey’s family from their lands and watched them starve. Guilt had gnawed Jamey nonetheless.

Then he’d spent an entire evening last week winkling information from one of the lady quarantine attendants in Kentucky. At the time he’d thought he was having another run of dreadful luck. The stallion had been gone only a few days.

“Took the haulers over an hour to load him,” the woman said over her third whiskey sour. “They didn’t dare tranquilize him for fear he’d fall down in the truck and they’d never get him up.” The woman shook her head. “To tell you the truth, we were glad to get rid of him. He’s been a problem child since the day he danced off the airplane from Belgium. It took three of us to handle him, and only then with a chain across his gums.”

“Dangerous?”

The woman had laughed. “Not mean, but definitely dangerous. Anything that big is dangerous.”

Somehow he’d have to convince Victoria Jamerson to ride again. But how long would it take to get her fit enough to deal with a horse like Roman?

She was still in good physical shape. Fantastic shape, actually. Disquieting shape.

He remembered her slim waist when he’d plucked her off that ladder and set her down beside him, then the feel of her breasts pressed against his back on the short motorcycle ride up the hill last evening, the strength of her arms around his waist that held him so tightly he could barely breathe. Nice memory.

Nice woman, dammit, a woman he’d very much enjoy taking to bed. He stared at his reflection in the window of her truck and realized he’d started dreaming of taking her to bed ten minutes after he’d met her.

He could not let himself get involved emotionally. Not with someone he might have to rob. He took a deep breath and dragged his mind back to finding ways of getting Vic Jamerson to ride Roman for him.

Even if her physical shape was superb, her psychological shape was a different matter. Panic attacks like the one on the motorcycle? He’d have to find a way to work her through them. And quickly. Surely he’d be helping her. He refused to consider that he might damage her further.

He found her in the office at the desk. She sat with her head in her hands. She seemed smaller. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her.

She heard him open the door, started guiltily and busied herself with something on the pad in front of her.

“Here,” he said, and handed her the sandwich and soda.

She took both, unwrapped the sandwich and began to eat without taking her eyes off him.

“Now talk.” He sat in the straight chair on the other side of the desk.

“Eat now, talk later,” she said..

“I’m not letting go of this.”

“Fine. In the meantime, go exercise a horse or muck a stall or something.” She turned her back on him and took a swig of soda.

“Fine.” He walked out and shut the door behind him. He checked the white board outside the wash rack for the list of horses to be exercised, went to the farthest stall, pulled out a big gray mare, rubbed her down, tacked her up, swung into the saddle and walked her to the arena. If Vic made him groom and tack his own horses, as well as exercise them, this would take all day.

“So let her muck the stalls,” he said to the mare.

As if in answer, the mare wickered softly. Instantly the stallion’s head went up; he turned and cantered straight at the paddock fence.

“Not now, old son,” Jamey said gently. He began to whistle softly. The stallion slid to a stop a foot from the fence, snorted, pranced around a bit and walked off with his tail in the air. The mare, not cycling sexually this early in February, could not have cared less.

“If you’d gotten to her, she’d have kicked your bloody head in,” Jamey said in passing. The stallion ignored him and fixed his eye on the mare.

She did enough ignoring for them both.

“Women,” Jamey said as he took the mare to a trot. “Make you hanker after them, then kick you in the crotch when you come close. Remember that, old son, and protect yourself in the clinches.”

IN THE OFFICE Vic took an additional two bites of her sandwich, then divided the rest between the two dogs. She wasn’t certain she could keep down what she’d already eaten.

How long had it been since she’d panicked that way? Years. Last night she’d managed to head off a full-blown attack when Jamey had demanded she ride behind him on his motorcycle. She’d been so damned proud of herself, elated that she had done it. Even enjoyed it—well, enjoyed having her arms around an attractive man. Her psyche had set her up obviously, and then ambushed her all over again.

She was so used to the whole world knowing and accepting her inability to get on a horse. Nobody questioned her any longer, and now that Frank was dead, nobody ever laughed at her or called her a coward for it, either.

Well, now that Mr. Jamey McLachlan knew what happened when she was pushed, he’d have better sense in future. He could whistle his way back to Oban before she’d discuss it with him any further. She decided to ignore the incident and muck stalls. As she pulled the door to the office closed behind her, the telephone rang. She rolled her eyes, but went back to answer it.

“Vic?”

“Good grief, Albert, you sound worse than Linette did yesterday.”

“The woman’s given me the flu. She’s piled up in the bed and I’m piled up on the couch.”

“Oh, Albert! You need me to come see about you?”

“No! You stay as far away from us as you can and you start taking some zinc right this minute. Maybe you won’t get it.”

“Obviously you’re not coming in today,” Vic said.

Albert groaned in reply.

“Have you called the doctor?”

“Doctor says it’s a virus. It takes three or four days. I got fever, Vic. Grown men don’t get fever.”

“You sound like Linette did it on purpose.” Vic laughed. “Look after yourself and don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll call Kenny and get him to come by after school to help out,” Albert said.

Vic caught her breath. “That won’t be necessary. I, uh...I’m managing just fine.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

His reply was a fit of coughing and a strangled “Bye.” She felt guilty to think of Albert’s flu as a stroke of luck, but now she wouldn’t have to explain Jamey McLachlan to him for at least another couple of days. By then she’d have better evidence that the man was not a serial killer. She knew darn well Albert’s nephew Kenny would go snitch about Jamey to Albert if she let the boy within a hundred yards of ValleyCrest. And Albert would coming racing over, fever or no, to check the man out.

This time she made it to the center hall before the telephone rang again. “Botheration!” she said, and picked up the portable from the wash rack.

“Miz Jamerson?”

She sighed. “Yes, Mr. Wilcox. What is it now?”

“Can you come up to the house? I need a decision on where to place these electrical outlets in the bathrooms.”

“How should I know? Put ’em where you think they should go.”

“Not my place to do that. I can’t go on until you come see.”

She’d been watching Jamey exercise the gray mare in the ring as she talked. The mare usually hated work, but today she seemed relaxed and almost enjoying herself. He definitely did have a way with horses. She noticed, however, that his gloved right hand grasped the right rein loosely, and that his left compensated in a complicated crossover hold. Workmanlike, but hardly delicate.

But he rode with a fluid grace that seemed to make him part of the horse. The mare responded to the slightest tilt of his slim hips.

The man was too damned attractive for his own good. She could think of half a dozen wealthy women who would be willing to set him up in business just for the sake of his companionship after hours.

Good thing she didn’t have enough money to tempt him.

“I’ve got to go up to the house to deal with the contractor,” she called to him. He glanced over, nodded and continued to work the mare.

“Gee,” she whispered. “Sure is nice to be missed.”

HALF AN HOUR LATER the mare relaxed in the paddock farthest from the stallion, and Jamey sat atop a tall, lopeared Thoroughbred gelding that reminded him of that cartoon buzzard—sort of a good-natured klutz.

As he lolloped around the end of the ring, he saw a figure emerge from the stable. For a moment he thought it was Vic, then realized this woman had short curly hair and carried her right arm in a sling. He pulled his horse down to a walk.

She was staring at him with her mouth open. “And whose little boy are you?” she asked.

“Name’s Jamey McLachlan,” he said, and stopped. “You’d be the exercise rider with the broken wing.”

“Angie Womack, yeah. Trust Fund’s momma.”

“Fine animal. Opinionated.”

Angie giggled. “You might say. Where’s Vic?”

“Dealing with a contractor.” He swung off the horse.

“Don’t let me stop you. Where on earth did you materialize from?”

“I’m a fortuitous Scottish saddle burn come to rescue the damsel in distress.”

“And just my size,” Angie said. “My, my, if I weren’t married... Oh, well.”

She followed Jamey to the wash rack and leaned against the wall while he took the tack off the horse. Then she picked up a brush and began to groom the other side.

“Your marriage, my loss,” Jamey said with a gallant bow.

“Ooh.” Angie rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you the sweet-talking liar, though?”

Within two minutes she’d managed to ferret out every bit of information he was at liberty to tell her about his cover story.

“So you’re responsible for the blessed peace and quiet from Mr. Miracle?” Angie asked. “And you’re going to exercise and groom the horses, muck the stalls, clean up that hellhole upstairs, plus feed and water? You have a couple of clones hiding in the office?”

“There’s just one of me. But I work fast.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Angie whispered. For a moment her eyes went flat, but by the time he looked up she was smiling again. “Ready to ride another horse?”

“Ready for a change of pace. Come and talk to me while I muck out a stall or two.”

“I’d offer to help, but with this stupid thing...” Angie waggled her sling at him.

He set to work, balancing the manure pick with his weak right hand and using the strength of his left to lift. Angie watched him, unaware that each time he hefted the fork a twinge of pain shot from his fingers to his elbow. “How well do you know Vic?” he asked.

“Very well and for a long time. I grew up with her niece, Liz, the one who’s just gotten married and run away to Florida for two months. Why?”

“Why doesn’t she ride?”

“Not doesn’t. Can’t.”

He set the fork down. “Listen, I saw the woman ride once a donkey’s years ago when I was still in school. Now I mention riding and she flies apart at the seams.”

Angie looked at him a moment without speaking. “Nearly everybody on this side of the Atlantic and a good many people on the other side know the story. It’s yesterday’s news. Nobody mentions it—they just take it for granted.”

“So? How’d she lose her nerve? That’s what it is, am I right?”

“A little more than that.” She perched on a tack trunk and swung her feet. “You probably saw her not long before her accident.”

“Accident?”

“Yeah. She was riding a Grand Prix jumper at Madison Square Garden—the one with the lousy practice area—and some fool going the wrong way crashed into her over a jump. The horses escaped with a few bruises and scrapes, but the other rider was killed instantly, and Vic nearly cashed it in, as well. She had a concussion, cracked skull, broken pelvis and a bunch of other broken bones—I don’t remember all the details. Anyway, she was in a coma for a while, then in traction and casts and therapy and God knows what all for almost a year, during which time the other guy’s family sued the Garden, Frank Jamerson, who was her husband and her trainer, the city of New York, the American Horse Shows Association and probably God Himself, for all I know.”

“What happened?”

“In the end she won, but it cost a fortune in legal fees before the thing was settled, and cost her a good deal more in anguish. Then when she finally did get home, the first day she came down here she went totally berserk. Took months before she could touch a horse and months more before she started working with them. She didn’t drive a car for years, and I don’t think she’s driven the tractor or flown on an airplane since.”

“There are therapies and medication to control panic attacks.”

“Oh, she tried ‘em. They helped some, but the doctors said she didn’t have a real phobia—what she had was ‘remembered trauma.’ Maybe if she’d been able to climb back on that horse five minutes after she crashed, she’d have been all right. When I fell, I got back on the horse and walked around the arena while I waited for the ambulance. I was in agony, but I was more scared that if I walked away, I’d be like Vic—and I couldn’t bear not to ride again.”

“And she’s all right with it?”

“As all right as you can be when the thing you’ve lived your life for is suddenly taken away from you.”

Jamey nodded. “Maybe it’s time she got it back.”

Angie’s eyes widened. “Don’t even try! I mean, she’ll pass out or have a stroke or something. Let the poor woman be.”

He smiled. “Of course. Not my place.”

“It certainly is not. She’s perfectly content the way she is.” Angie took a breath. “She’s the toughest, most organized person I know. There’s not a need she doesn’t meet. I mean, here she is running this barn single-handed, overseeing the house renovation, teaching lessons, medicating the horses and being everybody’s mother confessor. She’s amazing.” Angie turned her head and a broad grin spread over her face. “And heeeere’s Victoria.”

Vic strode down the aisle toward them. “Those contractors are going to drive me into an early grave. Hi, Ange. How’s the collarbone?”

Jamey leaned against the stall door and remembered Angie’s words There’s not a need she doesn’t meet. Maybe it was about time somebody starting meeting a few of hers. And that somebody was going to be Jamey McLachlan.

ANGIE ELBOWED VIC into her desk chair and plunked herself down across from her. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, I agree he’s gorgeous, but you can’t take strangers in off the street and put them to work.”

“You were perfectly charming out there. I assumed you two had made friends.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Angie asked. “I am a Southern gal. I’d be polite to General Sherman until he turned his back on me. Who is this guy, anyway? Where’d he come from?”

“An old friend of mine from England, Marshall Dunn, sent him to me.” Vic bristled. “He rides like an angel—and not a fallen one, unlike somebody I could mention.”

Angie blushed. “Okay, you don’t have to rub it in. But if you’d give me a couple of days, I could find you somebody to take my place.”

“Not necessary. Give me some credit, Angela Womack. I checked him out. He’s temporary help. Period.”

“Watch him is all I say. He seems very nice, but then so do most con men.”

“What would he be conning me out of? My feed bills? My manure pile?” She stood and pulled Angie to her feet by her good arm. “Go home and get better. Don’t worry about me. I can look after myself.”

After Angie drove away, still grumbling, Vic began to relax. Neither she nor Jamey brought up the subject of her riding, and they fell into an easy rhythm. Vic groomed and tacked so that each time Jamey finished exercising one horse, the next would be waiting on the wash rack for him.

While he rode, Vic took horses to paddocks and brought them in, and mucked at a stall or two. At noon Angie returned with burgers for everyone, but left again soon after lunch. Jamey had an idea that she wanted to speak to Vic privately, but didn’t see how to bow out during lunch without seeming discourteous.

At about four o’clock clients began to show up to ride their horses. Vic introduced Jamey, taught three private lessons while he finished mucking out stalls, fed and watered.

He had left the stallion outside all day and made no attempt to bring him in until nightfall about six, when the last of the clients had left.

He waited until Vic was in the office, then cross-tied the stallion on the wash rack and began to groom him, all the while whistling softly. He fitted a bridle on him, slid on his saddle and cinched the girth. The horse wriggled and stamped, but accepted the tack with no overt signs of fear. Obviously it wasn’t the first time he’d worn a saddle. Jamey flipped the stirrups up over the horse’s back and cinched them together with a short length of line so they wouldn’t bang against the horse’s sides, then he fitted a lunging cavesson over the bridle.

“What on earth are you doing?” Vic asked from the office door.

“Getting ready to exercise this brute.”

“You’ll get killed. I don’t even know if he’s saddle broke.”

“I can tell he’s saddle broke, all right, but beyond that I have no idea.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Well, somebody’s got to do it sometime, lass, unless you expect this boy to lollygag around in a pasture until somebody snips his groceries and makes him into a gelding—and that, if you’ll forgive my saying so, would be an awful thing.”

“Men! I promise if he kills you I’ll bury your corpse under the manure and deny I ever knew you.”

“Fair enough, lass. Now open that gate for me.”

Vic watched from the arena fence as Jamey began to lunge the stallion, sending him galloping away in a large circle at the end of the lunge line. The moment he hit the end he began to buck—huge, snorting crow-hops, kicking out with his hind legs.

“Good!” Jamey said as the horse began to race around the arena.

“Yes,” Vic said.

Jamey looked at her questioningly.

“Listen, you, I do know my business,” she said. “He’s just a juvenile delinquent who doesn’t know his job, but he’s not vicious. And somebody somewhere has tried to teach him manners.”

“Indeed they have.” Much better than he’d had any reason to hope, Jamey thought. He clicked and chirruped, called “trot” and amazingly enough, the horse slowed to a wild uncoordinated trot.

“Good Lord,” Vic said. “Look at that trot. It’s downright gorgeous! That’s no jumper, that’s a dressage champion—or will be once he finds out where his feet are.”

“Agreed.” Jamey clucked again and watched the horse settle to a long-limbed walk. He reversed the stallion and went through the same permutations once more. Then he called to Vic, “Give me a leg up here.”

“Now I know you’re nuts. You’ve ridden what—a dozen horses today? You must be rubber-legged.”

He cocked his head. “You know, you’re right. That’s enough. I’ve still got to work out where I’m sleeping tonight.”

“Where you slept last night, obviously,” Vic said. “That room behind the hayloft is no cleaner than it was yesterday.”

“I swept up the mouse droppings,” Jamey said.

“You didn’t get rid of ‘eau de mouse.”’

Jamey shrugged. “Now there you have me. Give me a bed tonight, and tomorrow I’ll scrub the room down with disinfectant and deodorant. And if you’ll allow me to take you out to dinner this evening as part payment for the bed.”

Vic shook her head. “Nope. I’m much too tired. I will, however, split a pizza with you. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They settled the stallion, then walked out of the stable side by side. Jamey tossed Vic a rider’s black velvet hard hat. “Here. This is for your ride up the hill on the BMW this evening.”

Vic shook her head. “No way. Tonight we go by truck. My truck. I drive. And then you can take it to pick up the pizza. They refuse to deliver this far out in the country.”

“Then I’ll put the bike in the stable, shall I? And lock the door?”

“Be my guest, but we don’t have many thieves. Open the tailgate on the truck so the dogs can hop up for the ride home. Oh, and you may have to pick Max’s rear end up. Basset hounds are not the world’s best leapers.”

JAMEY FOLLOWED Vic’s directions to the Italian restaurant. While he waited for the pizza to come out of the oven, he found a pay telephone by the rest rooms and called his farm in Scotland collect. After half a dozen rings and his uncle Hamish’s disgruntled agreement to accept the charges, Hamish sputtered, “Good God, lad, do you have any idea what time it is here?”

“Sorry, Uncle Hamish. This is the first chance I’ve had for a private chat. The horse is everything I hoped—at least he seems to be so far.”

“You’ve found him, then?” Hamish suddenly sounded fully awake.

“I think so.” Jamey gave him the story. “But don’t call me at ValleyCrest unless it’s an emergency. How are you and Uncle Vlado doing?”

“We’re fine. Everything’s all proper and accounted for. Nothing’s missing this time.”

“Nothing would’ve been missing last time if the pair of you had been in charge rather than my brother and my darling wife,” Jamey said.

“Aye, but just so you know. Have you ridden the beast?”

“Not yet Uncle Hamish, do you remember my last year in school when you and Jock took me with you to Hickstead for the horse trials? I must have been sixteen or so.”

“I remember Hickstead. I don’t remember any year in particular.”

“The Americans came in second. There was a woman rider named Victoria Jamerson riding for them. On a big gray gelding.”

“Humph.” Hamish was silent for a moment. “Beautiful girl with the devil’s own nerve, the sweetest softest hands I’ve ever seen, and a seat...” He sighed. “I remember wishing I could have that seat on my lap.” He chortled, and Jamey smiled at the telephone. “Married to a big fat brute of a trainer who yelled a lot. Why?”

Jamey explained.

“Terrible!” Hamish said. “A woman like that belongs on a horse.”

“If I have my way about it, Uncle Hamish, that’s where she’s going to be—sitting on top of Roman and showing him to me.”

“You’re mad! Steal the brute if you must and bring him home. Don’t get yourself mixed up with these gaja.”

Jamey let out such a burst of laughter that a waitress walking by him jumped and stared at him in alarm. “You sound like Uncle Vlado! Don’t forget, Uncle Hamish, you’re Jock’s brother, not Vlado’s. You’re a gaja yourself.”

“Maybe, but I’m too smart to mix myself up in the lives of people who don’t matter to me or to the McLachlans, Jamey.”

“I’m not mixing myself up. I’m doing this because it suits my purposes. I’ll help her out for a couple of weeks, see him work with another rider up, teach him some manners, find out whether or not I can buy the horse myself and then, if I have to, I sneak him into a trailer at two in the morning and head for Texas.”

“Mm-hm.” Hamish did not sound convinced. “And be the first person they look to as a thief.”

“Trust me, Hamish, I’ll do whatever it takes to get Roman home. We will have Jock’s first Scottish sport horse foal on the ground by the millennium, I promise. If they sue me, I’ll deal with that and any other legal unpleasantness I have to. But I’ll deal from Scotland. I owe Jock that and more. Roman will stand as foundation stallion at McLachlan Yard. I promised Jock before he died. I keep my promises.”