Читать книгу His Innocent Temptress - Kasey Michaels, Kasey Michaels - Страница 11

“Damn it!” Alex Coleman hastily wiped his hands on a towel, then threw it to the ground as he went racing out of the stall and toward the phone hanging on the wall at the far end of the stable. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

This couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t. He hadn’t been expecting the birth this soon, or even considered the possibility of complications.

Hell, he hadn’t expected the pregnancy. Jabbar hadn’t been put to stud in years, having earned his retirement from both the stud and the showring, where he’d been a perennial champion. It was Jabbar who had made The Desert Rose a top breeding farm for world-class Arabians, and his offspring numbered a multitude.

Plus one, if Alex could get Dr. Clark to the ranch in time.

Why had he put his new breeding mare in the pasture with Jabbar? He had thought Khalahari would be safe, be slowly introduced to the ranch, and that Jabbar, in his old age, would ignore the retired showring horse whose injury had taken her from the ring. Alex had bought the mare for almost nothing, but she had such good lines that he hoped one day to breed her. Just not now, and not with Jabbar.

“Somebody must have slipped the old boy some Viagra or something,” his brother Mac had joked when Alex confirmed that Khalahari was unexpectedly carrying Jabbar’s foal.

Consternation had changed to excitement as Alex decided that this could be a fantastic union, producing a true champion to take Jabbar’s place in the ring, in the stud. He didn’t know precisely why he felt that way, but it seemed as if fate, and Jabbar, had decreed it.

Now Khalahari was in trouble, the foal twisted inside her, and Alex knew he could lose them both.

“Come on, come on,” he chanted as he listened to the phone ring, willing Dr. Clark to answer, to be there, to come do his magic as he had done in the past.

“Hello? Dr. Clark’s office.”

Alex began speaking even before the woman had finished her greeting. “This is Alex Coleman out at The Desert Rose. I need the doctor, now.”

“I’ll be right there,” the woman answered.

“What?” Alex held the phone away from his ear for a moment, then realized what was going on. It wasn’t old Doc Clark. He was speaking with the daughter. Hannah? Yeah, Hannah. And fresh from veterinary school. “Not you, woman—your father. I’ve got a prize mare down, foaling, and she’s in big trouble.”

“I understand, Mr. Coleman,” Hannah answered, and he could hear her moving around, probably on a portable phone, gathering supplies or keys or whatever. “My father isn’t available, but I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“Look, sweetheart, I don’t think I’m getting through to you. This is an important foal. Get your hands-on experience somewhere else. With kittens, or something. But get me your dad, now.”

“He’s in Dallas attending a conference, Mr. Coleman, and won’t be home until very late tonight. I don’t think your mare can wait for him. As I said, I’ll be right there. Beggars can’t be choosers, Mr. Coleman. I’m a vet. You need a vet. Now we’re wasting time, aren’t we?”

“But—but I don’t—”

He was talking to the dial tone.

HANNAH MADE IT in fifteen minutes, pushing her four-wheel drive all the way, skidding to a halt in the stable yard as Alex Coleman ran into the yard, waving his arms at her.

Hopping out of the driver’s seat, her bag already in her hand, she got caught in the seat belt and landed on all fours in the stable yard. She quickly got up, brushed herself off, then followed him into the stable at a trot. “Where?” she said, as the man obviously wasn’t going to waste time saying hello.

“The big stall, down at the end, if you can get there without falling on your face again,” Alex told her, leading the way. “It’s a breech. Her first foal, and probably her last.”

“Gee, that pumped me right up, makes me all chock-full of confidence,” Hannah grumbled under her breath as she turned into the stall, tripping over a towel lying on the straw. Some entrance she’d made, pratfalls all the way. But she couldn’t think about that now. Not with the mare lying there, her single visible eye wide and wild with pain.

Hannah’s well-known klutziness, a symptom of her lifelong shyness and her father’s belief that she could never really please him, disappeared in a blink of the mare’s eye, and Hannah became all business.

“Grab her head, and hold it firm while I take a look, see where we are,” she ordered Alex. She was already throwing her fleece-lined jacket into a corner of the stall and rolling up her flannel sleeves. It was early March, and cold as hell outside, and the weatherman had actually promised there’d be an ice storm by nightfall, not that the weatherman was ever right. “Talk to her, let her know everything’s going to be all right.”

“Is it?” Alex asked, his tone caught somewhere between concern and sarcasm. “Oh, all right,” he said, dropping to his knees at the mare’s head. “It’s not like I have a choice, do I?”

Hannah looked at him. Tall, dark and handsome is as tall, dark and handsome does, and at the moment Alex Coleman wasn’t doing it for her at all. Which was strange, because she’d spent the past sixteen years of her life dragging around a crush on the man that probably matched the size of Texas and parts of Oklahoma. Not that he ever noticed. Not that he ever would notice.

Shaking herself back to attention, Hannah pulled on tight latex gloves and examined the mare, being careful to avoid the animal’s sharp hooves as she confirmed Alex’s own conclusion. “Breech, and too late to turn her,” she said, gathering her instruments for what would be a difficult birth.

There were alternatives. Cesarean, for one, but even that was risky, as one of the foal’s legs was already partly out of the birth canal. There was nothing else to do but reach in, find the other leg and pull like hell. Not exactly fancy, but the last resort usually isn’t.

“Can you do it?” Alex asked, obviously figuring out what she planned to do.

“I can do it,” she muttered from between her clenched teeth as she literally reached inside the mare, all the way up past her elbows. “Got it!” she said after long moments of fruitless searching, grabbing onto the foal’s legs, praying the birth canal had softened and widened enough to allow a safe passage for the foal.

“Small foal, thank God,” she said, pressing her head against the mare’s flank as she eased the second leg beside the first and waited for the next contraction. “Probably early?”

“Yes, early,” Alex said, soothing the mare. “She’s rolling her eyes again.”

“Contraction coming. Hold on, here we go,” Hannah said, then took a deep breath. She felt as if her arms were being crushed in a vise, as the mare tried to expel the foal and her arms from its body. She had a moment to rethink the gloves, as she was afraid she might end up losing one of them inside the mare.

“Watch the spine,” Alex warned.

“I…know…that,” Hannah gasped, for the first time worried that her strength wouldn’t be enough. But she’d gotten both back legs clear of the birth canal, and that was the biggest trick. One more contraction ought to do it. “Come on, little lady,” she crooned. “Come on and give us another push. You can do it.”

Her hands and arms still inside the horse, Hannah closed her eyes and visualized the drawings in one of her textbooks. Hands here. Position the foal, trying to turn it so the spine isn’t against the mother’s spine. Be careful of the cord. Wait for the contraction. Pull. Pull.

“Here it comes!” she shouted as the mare’s womb convulsed again and the animal screamed in pain. Half cradling, half turning and pulling, Hannah breathed a silent prayer and, moments later, felt the foal slip into the world. Ass backwards, but here just the same.

“Keep holding her head while I check both her and the foal,” Hannah ordered Alex, deftly dealing with the aftermath of the violent birth.

“What is it? Is it a mare?”

Hannah sneaked a quick look as the foal, typically light, as an Arabian destined to be coal-black looked at birth. “Nope. You’ve got yourself a new stud, Mr. Coleman, and he’s a beauty. Small, but a beauty. Oh, just look at that face! A perfect dish shape. A real champion!”

Within minutes, Khalahari was tending to her foal, both of them standing in the stall, the foal wobbly on his legs but already trying to nurse, and Hannah was stripping off her gloves, trying not to shake. It had been her first breech birth, not that she’d admit as much to Alex Coleman.

“Thank you,” he said as they left the stall, on their way to the large washtub at the other end of the stable. “I’m sorry I was so rough on you, but…well…”

“You thought how could klutzy Hannah Clark know anything about birthing a baby,” she completed for him as he turned on the water and handed her the soap, which she dropped, so that it clunked heavily in the bottom of the metal washtub.

Crisis over, klutziness back. It figured.

“Yeah, something like that,” Alex said, picking up the bar of soap and handing it to her again. “Anyway, I apologize. You did a terrific job.”

“I heard about this foal from my dad,” she told him, concentrating on soaping her hands. “It’s Jabbar’s, isn’t it? The original unplanned pedigree, registered pregnancy.”

“A gift from the Fates,” Alex said, handing Hannah a clean towel. “Desert Rose Khalid. That means—”

“Eternal. Yes, I know. It’s a lovely name.”

Alex tipped his head to one side, looked at her quizzically. “Arabic is one of the classes at the veterinary school?”

“Not really,” Hannah answered, avoiding his smile, which had the power to reduce her to a puddle of insecurities and unnamed desires. “Arabians are of special interest to me, because there are so many stables around the area, of course, but also personally. They’re just such beautiful, graceful animals.”

And an Arabian horse never looked better than when Alex Coleman sat one in the costume class of a competition, wearing snow-white Arab costume banded in gold, with a snow-white kaffiyeh on his head, ropes of gold weaving forming the agal that held the headdress in place.

The focus of such an event should still be the mount, the decorative bridle and other trappings, the proud lift of head and tail. But not when any of the Coleman boys were in the saddle, dressed in their ceremonial costumes. Then all eyes were on the dark-haired, dark-eyed men, their uniquely kinglike posture and ease, the deep golden tan of their skin against their kaffiyehs, the almost sensual thrill that filled the air when one of them rode into the ring.

Yes, all three were magnificent, but it had been Alex who had caught Hannah’s attention, and dreams, ever since she’d stood on the sidelines sixteen years ago, at the impressionable age of twelve, and knew that she had just lost her heart to the unattainable.

“Hannah? Hannah, are you listening to me?”

She shook herself out of her dream, rather surprised to see Alex standing in front of her in a deep brown corduroy jacket and skintight jeans. “Huh?” she said, and then blushed to the roots of her honey-blond hair.

“I said, I want to apologize again, and thank you. You came through like gangbusters, totally calm and professional.”

“You say that as if you still don’t believe it,” Hannah remarked, carefully stepping around a fallen rake, mentally seeing herself stepping on the tines so that the handle snapped upward and knocked her cold. Proud of herself, she turned her head to say something else to Alex—she wasn’t sure quite what—and felt her flannel shirt snag on a nail, ripping the sleeve as she instinctively pulled herself free. “Oh, God.”

Alex was biting his bottom lip, manfully trying not to laugh at her, she supposed.

“That’s the nail where we usually hang the rake, using the hole in the handle.”

“Yeah, figures,” she answered, her cheeks so hot they were stinging her eyes. Her stupid deer-in-headlights, too-big baby-blue eyes. Blond hair, blue eyes, and not quite five feet and three inches of too-slender body. All in all, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, she felt about as seductive as a three-year-old with a lap full of dolls.

Still, anyone would think she had clown feet big enough to wear the boxes instead of the shoes, and Mister Magoo eyesight, for the way she was always walking into things, falling over things, knocking things over and generally showing all the grace of a bowlegged kangaroo.

“Maybe if you were to stand still for a minute?”

“Hmm? Oh, all right, Mr. Coleman,” Hannah said, wondering how she had gotten back into the stall, when she had picked up her jacket, her bag. It was like her dad always said, she just didn’t pay attention. Among her other failings, like daydreaming. Boy, had she picked a bad moment to daydream.

“Ah, good. I think I feel more comfortable when you’re standing still,” Alex said. His grin was still gorgeous, full of white teeth and smiling eyes, but this time Hannah wanted to bop him over the head with her medical bag, because he was openly making fun of her.

“You don’t have to keep thanking me, you know. You will get a bill.”

“Which I’ll play, gladly. However, I want to do more than just pay the bill. You can’t know how much Khalid means to me, to The Desert Rose. We’ve put Jabbar to stud any number of times, and kept some of his offspring for ourselves, but most get sold, as you know. Khalid? Well, he’s a gift, from Jabbar to me, to my brothers, my family. He’s special.”

“That’s nice,” Hannah said sincerely. “And almost mystical.”

“Yes. Yes, it is, and so my gratitude should be larger than just saying thank you and then paying the bill. So, if there’s anything else you want—anything, please just ask. I will tell everyone I know about how cool you were under fire, and that they should have no qualms about calling you in when your father isn’t available. But that doesn’t seem like enough.”

Hannah lowered her eyes as the most ridiculous, outlandish, absurd idea flashed into her mind. Boy, could she ever think of a favor Alex Coleman could do for her! But no, that was impossible. First, because she’d never have the courage to ask him, and two, because it was a stupid, personally revealing request. Totally stupid.

“Hannah? How about dinner tonight? It’s not much, but it’s a start, and maybe by then you’ll have thought of something else I could do to show you my gratitude.”

“Dinner?” Hannah’s head flew up so quickly, and she was standing so close to Alex—actually, he was standing so close to her—that she nearly clipped his chin with her head. Stepping back quickly, stumbling for a moment, of course, she looked up at him. “Dinner? Tonight?”

Alex smiled, shook his head. “But no sharp knives,” he teased, taking the medical bag from her hand and walking out of the stable with her, back to her SUV. “I’ll pick you up around six or so, okay?”

She slid onto the seat, praying the keys were still in the ignition, because otherwise she’d be damned if she knew where they could be, and she wouldn’t be able to stick them into the ignition anyway. Her hands were shaking badly, too badly to blame on the damp, biting weather outside the warm stable. “At six. Sounds…sounds fine.”

“Good,” Alex said, slamming the door, then stepping away, probably to make sure she didn’t back up over his toes. Hannah felt his gaze on her until she’d made the turn that would cut off his sight of her, then stopped the SUV, gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tried to get her breathing under control.

He had asked her out! Not a date. Nobody in their right mind could call it a date. It was a thank-you offer. Maybe even a pity offer. But he’d made it, and she’d accepted, and he still wanted to do something else for her. “Anything,” he’d said. “Anything at all.”

Oh, brother. Would she ever get a chance like this again?

ALEX SPENT ANOTHER HOUR in the stable, just leaning over the top of the bottom half of the stall door, watching Khalahari and Khalid.

They would lose Jabbar soon, it was inevitable. He’d had a long, good life, and enriched their lives as much with his presence as with the foals he provided that made up the bedrock of The Desert Rose, the growing legend of The Desert Rose as a premier Arabian stud.

Jabbar. The last legacy of his parents, the only thing besides his two brothers and the golden ring he wore on his right hand, left to remind him of Sorajhee.

There were so few memories, clouded by the passage of time and the fact that he’d only been four-and-a-half years old when he was suddenly ripped from his mother’s arms and put on a plane, traveling halfway across the world to a new land, a new family.

He could remember his father, but only vaguely. A tall man, who never hesitated to bend down to speak to a small child. A man whose face Alex believed he saw in his own mirror as he shaved each morning, now that he was thirty-two, already a year older than his father had been when he was murdered.

Flashes of a long white robe. A bright white smile in a swarthy, sun-kissed face. Big hands, hands that gently held those so much smaller. The soft musical murmur of Arabic, a language Alex once knew but now had almost totally forgotten.

That was a sin, and a shame. But Uncle Randy had seen no need to keep up the boys’ Arabic lessons, or so he’d said, right up until the day he’d sat the three of them down and told them otherwise.

Hiding. They’d been in hiding for twenty-seven years, all of them. Hiding from their Uncle Azzam, who still ruled in Sorajhee. Alex kept up on the news about his homeland, although he didn’t say anything to his brothers, his aunt or his uncle. There was no need to worry them, make them think that he might plan to one day go back, claim his rightful throne.

It was too late for that. Years and years too late. All that was in Sorajhee were the graves of his parents. He didn’t know the people, didn’t even know much of the language. His life, his memories, and those of his brothers, were here in Texas.

Alex knew his father had died trying to make Sorajhee strong, safe from invasion, and that his mother had died to avenge their father and reclaim the throne for her sons. Now, with the passage of years, and the borders still firmly closed, Azzam’s rule was keeping Sorajhee out of the mainstream, keeping open only the ports that were the main income-making industry in the small country. Nobody save the natives of Sorajhee were allowed outside the ports, inside the country that was nearly an island, with only one strip of well-defended border touching the mainland. It was as if Azzam had built a high fence on three sides of the country and marked it “No Trespassing.”

Sorajhee was the past, both because of the time Alex had spent away from the land, and because his Uncle Azzam had decreed it to be so. But Azzam had been lucky so far. Keeping his ports open had kept the greedy eyes of the Middle East turned away from him for years, concentrating them instead on oil-rich countries like the neighboring Balahar.

But nothing stands still, and Alex, from his reading, felt sure that Sorajhee and Balahar would soon have to unite, as his father had prophesied, or they would both be overrun.

No. This was no place for a son of Ibrahim Bin Habib El Jeved. Enough Jeved blood had already been spilled, enough Jeved lives had been altered forever. Let his Uncle Azzam realize his brother had been right, or let him perish. Alex sometimes wondered if he was fatalistic or if what he felt inside him was the age-old Arab belief in fate. Either way, the fate of Sorajhee was not his. That he did know.

Alex had a job, a sacred trust his mother had given him that last day. He was to take care of his brothers, of Jabbar. He was to help his uncle Randy. And that is what he’d done. He was at peace with his past and with his future.

“I just heard,” Cade said, leaning on the wood beside Alex. “I got back from town a little while ago, and Mickey stopped me to give the good news. He’s a beaut, Alex. A true son of his sire. He’ll be black as Jabbar, too. Glorious and proud. But that will take a while.”

Alex smiled at his brother. “First he has to learn to control all four legs at one time,” he said. His brother, youngest of the twins by a few very important minutes as far as the succession went, was the Coleman who had chosen running the business end of The Desert Rose as his life’s work. Both Cade and Mac resembled Alex, but there was something softer, more human, about their dark handsomeness. More of Rose lived in her twins.

Alex flicked at Cade’s lapel. “A suit? You’re wearing a suit? Where did you say you went? And what’s her name?”

“Business, big brother, I went into Austin on business,” Cade corrected him, then shook his head. “Okay, and a girl.”

“There’s always a girl, isn’t there, Cade?” Alex said, turning to walk away from the stall. He was filthy, a little bloody, and suddenly he wanted a hot shower and clean clothes. “If you weren’t so damn good at your job, I’d have to call you a playboy, you know.”

“Well, now I’m insulted. I’d like to be considered a playboy. Has a certain ring to it, you know,” Cade said, obviously joking. “Not that anyone could call you a playboy, big brother. When was the last time you were out on a date? Your Bridle High School senior prom?” They walked across the stable yard together, Cade careful of his dress shoes, heading for the main house.

“Just because I don’t see one girl for drinks at seven, and another at ten for a late dinner, and call that a double date, doesn’t mean I don’t have a social life. As a matter of fact,” he said, knowing he was about to put his foot in his mouth, “I have a date tonight.”

Cade stopped dead outside the front door of the house. “Excuse me? I couldn’t have heard that right. You have a date? Has anyone notified the newspapers? Who is it?”

“Hannah Clark,” Alex muttered under his breath as he opened the front door, gestured for Cade to enter the house ahead of him.

“Oh, Hannah Clark,” Cade said, wiping his feet on the mat, his attention momentarily distracted, as he knew his Aunt Vi didn’t think he was too old to be scolded for tracing stable yard dirt into her house. “Whoa! Wait a minute. Did I just say Hannah Clark?”

“Actually, I said it.” Alex hung his hat on one of the hooks just inside the foyer. “She delivered the foal, a breech, and I wanted to thank her.”

“Uh-huh,” Cade said, watching as Alex stripped off his jacket and hung it on another peg. “Aunt Vi hates when you do that, you know. She says the rack is just for show. You weren’t even supposed to come in the front door in your boots. But, then, having a date with the Hannah Slip-on-a-banana Clark has probably scrambled your brains. Hannah Clark, Alex? Really?”

“Oh, shut up,” Alex said, stomping off to the wing of the house where he and his brothers all had their own rooms.