Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 02 - Out of the Darkness (21 page)

They work in companionable silence. Once Dan has washed Tulip’s face, he grabs a different sponge and gives a little attention to her tail-area. She probably wouldn’t mind being sprayed there, but… it just seems a little rude. Not that the sponge isn’t, Dan guesses.

Then he takes the sweat scraper and works along behind Anna, sending the water off in splashing sheets. There’s something very satisfying about using a sweat scraper.

He hears the water turn off, and Anna reappears from the far side of the horse. “Is that good?”

“Yeah, it’s great. She likes to drink from the hose. If you just put it on a pretty gentle setting, you could let her play with that while I finish up with the scraper?”

Anna follows Dan’s suggestion, and he hears her delighted laughter soon after. He looks up just in time to get a spray from the hose. Anna is trying to look surprised. Technically the nozzle
is
being held in Tulip’s mouth, but Dan can see Anna’s hand supporting the hose on the far side of the horse’s face, and the woman’s face is far too innocent for her to actually
be
innocent.

Dan just shakes his head. “And you think
Evan
is immature….”

“Honey, at my age, being called ‘mature’ is no longer a compliment.” She reclaims the hose from Tulip’s mouth and starts coiling it up while Dan finishes off with the scraper. He checks his watch again.

“It’s still warm out, and there’s no wind. She can just go in the paddock to dry.” He runs a hand over her legs, sweeping the water away from the places he can’t use the scraper. “Would it be okay with you if we stopped at my place on the way to Jeff’s? I just need a quick shower and some fresh clothes. We’re supposed to go to the barbecue straight from the airport, and I really don’t feel like facing the Three while I smell like horse.” He casts a mock frown at Anna. “
Damp
horse.”

“Oh, Tulip must have been trying to clean you up! How thoughtful of you, sweetheart.” She pats Tulip’s neck. “But, you’re right, she didn’t do an excellent job, so I’d be happy to snoop around your house while you get cleaned up.”

Dan just laughs. “The place is clean, lady. Snoop all you want.” She pouts a little as she backs Tulip out of the wash rack and starts leading her toward the field. “Well, what’s the use in snooping if there’s nothing to find?” She tuts a little. “That’s very disappointing.” “Sorry. If you want to wait in the car a couple minutes, I could try to plant something….”

 

“Oh, what a gentleman you are! I appreciate the thought. But I guess I can just… read?”

Dan shrugs. “Actually, most of my books are over at Tat’s for her to read while she’s recovering. But, honestly, I’ll be quick. Less than five minutes, guaranteed.”

Anna gives him a look up and down. “All this and low maintenance too?”

“Hey! Don’t objectify me!” Dan pretends to be bashful and hide behind Tulip. He really likes Jeff’s mom; he’s not even too worried about her asking about him and Jeff. Hell, he almost hopes she does, just so he has someone to talk to about it. Well, he’ll be able to talk to Chris, but Chris doesn’t really know Jeff, and his perspective can be a bit… odd sometimes.

They turn Tulip out and head back to the barn, and Anna watches with interest as Dan leaves a few notes on the chalkboard. As they’re walking out to the car, she asks, “So, how did you get trained for all this? Did you go to school, or…?”

“Nah, no school. I’m not… I’m not much of student. I never really got trained. I just picked stuff up as I went.” He looks around a little furtively. “Probably everyone else here has had more actual training than I have. I’ve never even taken lessons, except for trainers yelling at me to stop ruining their horses.”

Anna nods and smiles. “That’s pretty impressive, then, isn’t it? To be self-taught and still have trained a Rolex winner?”

Dan shrugs uncomfortably. “I was on the paper as Willow’s trainer, but… that was a family effort. Justin’s parents owned her, and they always had lots to say about her training.
Lots
to say. And Justin… you know, he was working with other horses, but he spent a lot of time with her too. I think I learned a lot more from that experience than I knew going in.” They pause for a second as they climb into Dan’s truck, and they’re quiet for a bit longer as they pull away. Dan’s thinking about
everything
he’d learned after taking Willow to Rolex.

“We got hate mail. To Justin, mostly, but sometimes to me too.” He looks over at Anna’s confused face. “After the kiss. I’m glad that it was good for you, and Jeff, but… Justin was young and gorgeous and well-spoken and American…. He should have been rolling in offers, but he hardly got any endorsements. He had an agent before Rolex, for handling endorsement contracts, or whatever… and after Rolex, he quit. He said if Justin was going to shoot himself in the foot, there was no point in wasting everyone’s time.”

Anna shakes her head. “I didn’t know that. It….” She sighs. “It’s an ugly world, sometimes, isn’t it?”

Dan doesn’t really have anything to say to that. She’s right, it is. “And then, after… after the accident. I got a bunch more letters. Most were really nice, you know? But there were some—quite a few, really—that said that it was a punishment. That having Justin fall at the exact same event where he’d kissed me…. They said that was a clear message and God was punishing him for being gay.” He shakes his head. “Well, they didn’t say anything quite as polite as ‘gay’.” Dan’s never told anyone this before. He doesn’t really know why he’s saying it now.

“That’s….” Anna seems to be at a loss for words. “I mean, obviously you know that’s total horseshit, but it must have still hurt to have somebody say it.”

Dan laughs a little uncomfortably. “Yeah, something like that.” He has no idea why he brought this up, and he thinks he’d better get the hell off the topic before he has trouble driving. “So, did you used to work with horses?”

Anna copes with the change of subject smoothly. “I’ve ridden all my life, but, no, I’ve never been paid for it.” She looks over at Dan. “I was a high school principal, actually.”

Dan thinks back frantically. He’d said he wasn’t much of a student, but he hadn’t said anything too bad about school itself, had he? “I didn’t know that. I, uh… I had some pretty nice principals, I think….”

“Some? How many schools did you go to?”

 

“Oh, I don’t know. Quite a few.” He shrugs a little. “I moved around a lot.”

 

“Well, that can certainly make it difficult to care about school.”

That’s a bit more understanding than Dan was expecting from someone who’d devoted her professional life to education. Nice. “So did Jeff go to the high school you worked at?”

Anna laughs as she shakes her head. “I think he was mortified enough just to be attending school in the same district where I worked. The same school would not have been a good plan.”

“I don’t know, you could have shared your rebellion-management system with the teachers, really helped them out….”

 

“Oh, I shared the plan, believe me. I was always quite active in his education, to the discomfort of him
and
his teachers.”

 

Dan nods. “Yeah, I’ll bet. So did he go to college or anything? Or just start working with horses?”

Anna frowns at him a little. “Do you two not talk at all?” Dan is a bit embarrassed, but Anna just continues. “He went to U Dub—The University of Washington—for Fine Arts. But he needed a job when he graduated, and the horses were easy.”

“And it took him this long to get back to the art? I mean, I knew the show was a big deal for him, but I didn’t know it was
that
big.” Dan is a bit ashamed. He should have known, should have taken the trouble to find out.

They’re at the apartment now, and Dan is suddenly shy. From the way Jeff acts, Dan had thought that Jeff came from a similar background to his own. He hadn’t been embarrassed about workingclass Anna seeing his dingy apartment, but Principal Stevens might not be too impressed. But she’s getting out of the truck, and it’s too late. “Uh, it’s just temporary…. I haven’t been out here long.”

“I thought Jeff said you were staying in the Kaminski guest house?”

 

“Uh, yeah, I started there, but it was a bit… close. You know?” She nods. “You need a little independence. I can understand that. I think Jeff feels the same way, sometimes.”

 

They head up the stairs, and if Anna is surprised when they get inside, there’s no visible sign of it.

 

“So, uh, I don’t have much to offer in terms of hospitality; there’s water or beer or… bourbon….”

Anna’s eyes literally light up. “Oh my God, a beer would be perfect.” She’s heading toward the kitchen as she speaks. “Can I get you one?”

“Oh, no, I’m good. I’m just gonna go hop in the shower.” She nods and pulls the fridge open. “Okay. Five minutes, now— I’m timing you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He heads off to the shower. He’s not quite sure how he managed to get to this point in his life, stripping down while there’s a female high school principal drinking beer in his living room, but he doesn’t really have time to worry about it. He has no doubt that she really is timing him. He steps into the shower before the water’s even hot and lathers up. He doesn’t want to disappoint Jeff’s mom.

Chapter 13

D
AN
is showered and dressed in four minutes. He’s not exactly dry, but he’s dressed. He heads back out to the living room and finds Anna sitting on the couch with her beer. There’s a book beside her on the sofa, looking like she’d just set it down, and Dan comes a little closer. Sweet Jesus. It’s
Conditioning t he E quine Athlete
, the book he and Justin had defaced with their suggestions for things they’d like to do to each other.

Judging by the look on her face, Anna has gotten that far in the book. Dan wishes that the apartment was in a high-rise building so that he’d have a chance of dying if he threw himself out the window.

Anna looks up and sees his cherry-red face, and she giggles a little. “Oops. It was on top of the box.”

Dan looks in the directions she’d gestured and remembers putting the book there. He’d been being careful, sorting it from his other books to make sure he didn’t accidentally send it to Tat. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Anna shakes her head. “No, really, I’m sorry.” Her apology would be more compelling if she could stop giggling. Although her obvious amusement makes Dan’s own apology fairly unnecessary as well.

He shakes his head. “Better you than Tat, I guess.”

Anna stops giggling and breaks into a full-fledged laugh. “Absolutely! You wouldn’t want to build up her expectations, make her think that the men in her future life are likely to be that… creative.”

Dan snorts a little. “A lot of it was mostly theoretical….”

Anna holds up her hand. “No, don’t disillusion me!” She gets a crafty look on her face. “Low maintenance, punctual”—she gestures to her watch—“and adventurous.” She waves her hand at the book. “Jeff’s a lucky man.”

Dan groans. “No, please don’t mention your son while you’re sitting next to that book.”

 

“What, Jeff doesn’t deserve to benefit from your… imagination?”

Dan’s hands fly to his ears. “I’m not having this conversation with you.” He’s tempted to start the “Lalala I can’t hear you” routine, but he refrains. For now, at least.

Anna stands up, and Dan thinks she’s relented, but then she picks up her beer and takes a few chugs to finish it. “I had to cool off a little,” she explains.

Dan shakes his head. At least now he knows where Jeff got his laid-back attitude toward sex. “If you’re about done, we can get going.” She starts toward the door. “You did say I could snoop, as I recall.”

“I know I did. I forgot about the book.” Dan shakes his head, and then turns to her in renewed alarm. “Is that all I forgot? Did you find anything else?”

Anna just smiles beatifically at him and then proceeds down the stairs. He resists the urge to run back inside and search madly through his possessions to find anything incriminating; instead, he follows her down.

They get in the truck, and Dan concentrates on driving. Anna’s quiet for a while and then says, “Nice truck.”

Dan looks at her warily. He happens to agree with her, but most people would only say that if they were being sarcastic. “It’s not flashy, but it does its job,” he replies cautiously.

She nods. “And probably doesn’t complain a lot, either.” She pauses. “How do you think Jeff would feel if I came down here and worked for you?”

Dan grins a little sheepishly. “Yeah, that question occurred to me about two seconds after I mentioned the job to you.” He shoots her a quick look. “I’ve never heard him say anything that would suggest that it would be a problem. But, like you said, we don’t talk that much.” He frowns. “Or, we do, but it’s usually about me, maybe….” He looks at her again, trying to gauge whether she’s concerned about her son getting involved with such a self-centered ass, but she’s smiling.

“That sounds like Jeff. He’ll answer a direct question, probably, but he’s really not much for volunteering information.” She runs her hands gently over the dashboard. “If the offer’s still open, I’d like to talk to him about it. I’ve been feeling a little… directionless… in Seattle.” She looks out the window and then back over at Dan. “That’s a bit of an understatement. I’ve been feeling like I’m in a warehouse, being stored until I have the good manners to die.”

Dan has trouble believing this. He doesn’t know how old Anna is—doesn’t know how old Jeff is, really—but she seems very healthy and energetic. And her mind is obviously still completely sharp. A little too sharp, even. “Does Jeff know that? About how you’re feeling?”

She shakes her head. “It just seemed like complaining, to tell him. But if I have a solution in mind, then it’s not complaining, it’s explaining… right?”

“Sounds right to me.” Dan pauses. “But I should probably warn you; I have pretty bad judgment about people. Or something. I don’t read people very well. I think that’s it. Or part of it, at least… I’m not sure….” He grins a little. “Also, I babble.”

Anna laughs. “All right, I’ll consider myself warned.” They’re silent for a while, and then Anna starts up. “Jeff and Evan… they’ve been together for quite a while.”