She chewed on her lower lip, and he read the hesitation swirling in her violet eyes. Finally, she said, “Someone’s been spooking him.”
He lifted a brow, her declaration making him uneasy. “After five minutes in King’s stall you came to that conclusion?” He forced an amused note to his voice. “I suppose King told you that while you were in his stall? Whispered it in your ear, maybe?”
She glanced away, but not before he saw her annoyance at his teasing remark. “I have ... a way with animals,” she explained, her attention drawn to the sugar cubes that were beginning to crystalize in her palm. “Your stallion is very spirited by nature, but he has some symptoms of being mistreated.”
Her words were spoken with such conviction, he wondered if he should be insulted. “You’re not insinuating I mistreat my animals, are you?”
Her gaze flew to his, her lips pursed. “Of course not. You’re far too gentle and caring to abuse anything or anyone.”
He jammed his hands on his hips, impatient and unsettled by all her observations. “Is my stallion marked?”
“No, not physically.”
The woman was a witch, J.T. thought. Or an animal psychologist, if there was even such a thing. In so many words she was telling him that King was scarred emotionally. What a crock! He shook his head, retaining the urge to laugh off this whole verbal exchange. “You’re crazy, you know that, lady? I’m going to just forget we ever had this weird conversation.” He turned and started for the door. At the last minute he stopped and glanced back at her. “And stay out of his stall, Caitlan.”
Caitlan watched J.T. slip out of the barn, then she moved to King’s stall. She knew her comments about King’s emotional abuse sounded strange to J.T., but she had no concrete evidence with which to back up her claim. Only this strong sense she shared with the stallion.
Looking through the slats, she met King’s gaze and knew in that moment that the stallion trusted her. “Good boy,” she murmured, smiling. “I have a feeling you and I are going to become good friends.”
At three in the morning, after two hours spent with King, forming a fragile trust, Caitlan slipped quietly into the ranch house and up the stairs to the guest bedroom. Everyone had been asleep for hours, and she was careful not to make any loud noises as she shrugged out of her jacket and pulled off her boots.
Caitlan was pleased with the open way King had responded to her. With time and care J.T. would be able to fully enjoy the stallion’s spirit, without the threat of the horse being dangerous. She couldn’t help but wonder who was spooking King, and why.
More exhilarated than tired, Caitlan changed into her nightshirt, grabbed her sketch pad and pencil from the dresser drawer, and went back downstairs to cozy up in her spot in the living-room window seat. Drawing up her knees slightly for a table, she rested the pad on her thighs. Tonight she was too keyed up to lay down.
Thumbing past the disturbing sketch of the young boy she’d drawn last night, Caitlan started on a clean sheet of paper, consciously sketching a picture of J.T. astride King to keep herself occupied. The contours of J.T.’s handsome face came easily to her, and as the image came to life, each feature at a time, a warm, shimmering sensation settled in her belly. Familiar images once again touched the edges of her memory. She closed her eyes to probe deeper, searching valiantly for the link to these visions.
Strangely, the fragrance of a spring afternoon surrounded Caitlan, and the sensation of a warm breeze wafted across her skin. The sky above the beautiful meadow was cloudless. She heard the chirp of birds, and two orange butterflies fluttered past. The sound of giggles and boyish laughter reached Caitlan’s ears. Then she saw them in her mind. The boy she’d drawn last night was playfully chasing the blond-haired girl, deliberately allowing her to take the lead. Caitlan realized with sudden clarity that the boy was J.T., at about the age of fifteen. Why hadn’t she noticed the resemblance in her drawing? And what significance did the girl hold to her visions?
J.T. chased the girl, closing in on her as they neared a stream and a large shady tree. The girl taunted him over her shoulder, daring him to catch her. One last long stride and he tackled her gently to the soft carpet of grass, her squeal of surprise rending the air.
“I gotcha!” he said, smiling down at her.
She gave him an upswept look, much too sultry for a girl so young. “So what’re you gonna do about it?”
“This.”
Caitlan watched in her mind as J.T.’s fingers fluttered over every ticklish spot on the girl’s body. Impossible as it seemed, Caitlan’s body began to tingle, as if she was being tickled, and she had the strangest urge to laugh along with J.T. and the girl. The young girl’s gales of laughter filled the meadow and she gasped for breath, begging him to stop the torture.
“Say the magic words,” J.T. coaxed, all the while his fingers were finding every vulnerable area—her neck, under her arm, her waist, just above the knee.
“I love you,” she said breathlessly, then grew serious when J.T. stopped tickling her. She stared up at him, eyes shining with adoration. “I love you, Johnny.”
“Much better,” he murmured, a grin of satisfaction curving his mouth. All play vanished, replaced by a sensual hunger. “Now kiss me, Mandy.” Lowering his head, he dropped his mouth over hers.
The kiss the young lovers shared was passionate, like the one she’d shared with J.T. last night. Caitlan’s breath caught as ripples of silky heat rushed along her nerve endings, and the sensation of being deeply, thoroughly kissed stole through her. She was being swept away, into her vision, taking the place of the blond-haired girl.
J.T.’s feelings poured into her soul, an aching tenderness, an eternal love that twined around her heart, seducing her in the sweetest way....
The creak and soft thud of someone coming down the stairs penetrated Caitlan’s mind, banishing the images, but leaving the soft hum of awareness in her veins. Startled out of her thoughts, the pencil fell from her fingers and hit the wooden floor at the same instant that J.T. rounded the corner into the living room. He stopped abruptly, and even in the dim moonlight she could see his whole body go rigid and alert. Then a hiss of breath escaped him when he saw her form silhouetted in the window seat.
“Jesus, Caitlan, you scared the hell out of me.” He dragged his fingers through his disheveled hair. “What are you doing up at this hour?”
Willing her pulse to subside, she watched him approach in slow, lazy strides, his bare feet padding on the floor. The only article of clothing he wore were his jeans, and Caitlan’s mouth went a little dry when she remembered the hard warmth of his chest beneath her fingers last night. She swallowed and answered his question. “I, uh, I’m drawing.” Flipping the pad closed, she concealed her private thoughts and images. “I couldn’t sleep.”
He sat down on the other end of the seat, his thigh touching her toes. His smile was sleepy, warm and sensual, and did intimate things to her already aroused body. Somewhere along the way last evening, through a pleasant dinner and afterward, watching a video with Laura, a truce had been called silently between them. She liked being comfortable with him and hoped it would last.
“Do you
ever
sleep?” he asked, moonlight glinting off the humor in his eyes.
“Yes.” Considering two nights in a row he’d caught her up in the early morning hours, his question was a valid one. “I function fine on a few hours.”
“I wish I could say the same.” He leaned closer, looking over her jersey-covered knees to the sketch pad she held against her chest. “What are you drawing?”
“Nothing.” Her chest tightened with apprehension. Now that she knew the boy she’d drawn was him, she wasn’t sharing her sketches with anyone. If she didn’t understand all the crazy things happening to her, how could she begin to explain them to him?
“Can I have a look at your nothing?” he persisted.
He touched a finger to her ankle—just a butterfly touch, really—but after the vision she’d seen and experienced, her reaction was anything but mild. Pleasurable waves of heat lapped up her leg, making her conscious of a growing heaviness in secret places. He didn’t seem aware of the turmoil he caused in her, and she wasn’t about to let on to it by jerking her foot away.
“I’m just sketching a picture of King, nothing spectacular.” She surprised herself with the casualness of her voice.
“Don’t tell me you’re self-conscious about your work.” He smiled, that lazy, sexy smile that lit up his eyes.
She shrugged. “I guess I am.”
His finger fell away from her ankle and he stared thoughtfully out the window. “I knew someone who was the same way with her drawings. She had this natural gift, yet she was so modest about it, like you.” He glanced back at her, and the distant pain in his eyes gripped her heart. “Maybe someday you’ll show me your sketches?”
Someday. The future
. There wouldn’t be one for them. Why did that thought make her ache deep inside? “Maybe,” she said, knowing it was a promise she didn’t have half a chance of keeping.
He stood and nodded toward the kitchen. “I was just going to get a glass of orange juice. Since both of us seem to have insomnia, care to join me?”
J.T.’s invitation was one Caitlan couldn’t resist. She wanted to be near him, for reasons beyond protecting him. For selfish reasons that could never really amount to anything. He made her feel reckless and bold, and she went with the moment before it was lost to both of them.
“I’d love a glass of orange juice.” Sliding off the window seat, she followed his form through the darkened living room.
J.T. flipped on the light when they walked into the kitchen. Caitlan sat down at the table. Setting her sketch pad and pencil aside, she watched as he strolled to the refrigerator, opened the door, and peered at the contents. The smooth muscles across his back flexed as he bent over and reached inside.
“I’m gonna wring her neck,” J.T. grumbled irritably.
“Whose? Paula’s?”
“No. Laura’s.” He brought out a glass pitcher with a ring of orange juice staining the bottom. “She always puts the pitcher back with only a few drops left in it. Does that look like enough to fill a glass to you?” He held the container up for her inspection.
Caitlan laughed softly, suspecting he asked the same question, and used the same patronizing tone, when reprimanding Laura herself. “ ‘Fess up. I’m sure you did it when you were a boy.”
His fierce frown dissolved into a guilty grimace. “Actually, I was worse. I drank the juice directly out of the pitcher, then put it back in the fridge empty. Now I know why my mother used to get so upset, because it annoys the hell out of me when Laura does it.” He set the pitcher in the sink, went back to the refrigerator, and grabbed the container of milk. “How about a cup of hot cocoa instead?”
“Sounds good.” Standing, she walked to the counter where Paula had left the tarts. She pulled the plastic wrap off the plate, and the sweet yet tangy aroma of cherries drifted up to her. “Would you like one?” she offered. “I made them. You didn’t have one after dinner, and if I do say so myself, for a first attempt they aren’t half bad.”
Filling the pan on the stove with milk, he glanced at her, his eyes glittering with a teasing light. “I’ll risk eating one. Warmed, please.”
She smiled. Setting two on a plate, she popped them into the small microwave, set the timer, and let them warm. Leaning her hip against the counter, she watched as he scooped sweetened cocoa into two mugs and then stirred the milk so it didn’t scald.
Interested to know more about his family, and him, she asked softly, “Has your mother been gone for long?”
The surprise her question triggered was quickly replaced by a distant sadness in the depths of his gaze. “She died from cancer when I was eight.”
His long-ago grief touched her. “You were so young.” The microwave buzzed. Removing the plate, she took it to the table and sat back down.
“Yeah.” He sighed, pouring the milk into each of their mugs. Bringing them to the table, he sat in his usual spot across from her. “It was tough when Mom died. Debbie and I were both close to her.”
“Your father never remarried?”
“Nope. He loved Mom so much, he said he didn’t even want to try and find someone as sweet as her.” He grabbed one of the pastries and took a huge bite.
Caitlan smiled to herself, instinctively knowing that, with a love as binding as the one his parents had shared, they were joined in heaven. “So you grew up without a mother around,” she went on, taking the other pastry and nibbling on the corner of it.
“Yeah.” He stared thoughtfully at the filling oozing from his pastry. “I missed her, but I still had Dad for guidance. Mom’s death was hardest on Debbie.” He transferred his gaze to her, distant emotions shading his eyes. “Dad wasn’t all that comfortable explaining ‘female’ things, and even though Paula was around, Debbie got cheated out of that closeness mothers and daughters seem to share. That’s probably why Deb is so protective and extra loving with her own girls. She wants to give them everything she missed out on.”