She let out her breath. “Liar,” she said amiably, but he felt her fingers relax as her foot took the place of his and she scrambled aboard.
Jamey slid back behind the saddle to sit on the gelding’s rump. The cantle dug painfully into his stomach when he wrapped his arms around Vic, but he put up with it for the pleasure of smelling her skin, feeling her body fit against his again, the way the short hair at the nape of her neck brushed his cheek when he leaned against her. He wondered what she’d do if he bit her earlobe.
He was having one hell of a time keeping his mind on business. He wanted her, blast it! Wanted to peel off every stitch of clothing that kept his skin from hers, wanted to hold her and taste her and sink into her body.
His burgeoning erection made his position behind the cantle of the saddle damned near unbearable. He grunted and slid back a bit.
She turned her head slightly. “I’m all right now,” she whispered. “Thanks.”
He slid off the horse and turned away before she could see how she had affected him. “Then let’s get on with it. Move that horse out into a trot, please. And do me a couple of figure eights while you’re about it. You need to start putting a horse on the bit again if you’re going to ride the stallion tomorrow night.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. For the moment you keep trotting. You need the exercise. I’ll be joining you shortly on the stallion. No sense in wasting time now, is there?” He walked quickly out of the ring.
He heard her exasperated and slightly panicky “Jamey!” but he kept walking. All ten of his fingers were crossed. She’d not been alone before without his eyes on her, his hand ready to steady her, his song to lull her fears. Now it was only her and the horse and the ring and the dark cold lonely night.
He listened closely as he led the stallion to be tacked up, half fearing to hear her wail, half hoping that she’d call out to him again, that she’d need him, that he could once more rescue her, hold her, comfort her.
All he heard was the thud of the horse’s hooves. Still, he tacked Roman as quickly as possible and rode into the ring.
She trotted across the ring from him and stuck her tongue out at him as she passed. He threw back his head and laughed. Roman bounced five feet into the air and nearly pitched him headfirst into the dirt.
The rest of the session—and it was a long one—went more or less as planned. They worked in companionable silence. Jamey saw her disconnect more and more from him and connect more closely to the gelding as she rediscovered the talent that had made her such a superb competitor all those years ago.
He glowed with pride at her focus, and when she began to trot rails on the ground, he felt a thrill, but nothing so great as the thrill when she turned down the center and jumped the big gelding over a small training fence. No more than eighteen inches above the ground it was, but for Vic it might as well have been a hundred feet high.
“Yes!” she shouted when she landed. Her face said it all. She was enraptured. He felt a terrible pang of loneliness, as though he were a parent watching a child leave home. She trotted up beside him. Her chest heaved, and her skin glowed with a sheen of sweat even in the cold dank air of the arena.
“I’d forgotten how much I love this!” she declared. “I love it! God in heaven, how did I live all those years without this?”
“Best cool that animal out before you wind up so sore you won’t be able to get out of bed tomorrow morning.”
“Ah, but I have my
chef d’équipé
to rub me down.” She smiled at him. She was actually flirting with him. Acknowledging her sexuality. More than that. Acknowledging that she knew he was attracted to her.
She rode ahead of him and took the gelding into an easy canter. “Careful, lass,” he called. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can’t ever be hurt with you,” she called over her shoulder. “With you I’m invincible.”
“And drunk with power. That’s enough for tonight, woman. Listen to what I’m telling you here!”
“Oh, all right, spoilsport.” She brought the gelding to a walk. As she stepped to the gate, she wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ll show you, mister. I damned well
will
ride the stallion tomorrow night. You see if I don’t.”
He froze. That was what he wanted, what he’d been aiming at all along. Yet his mind rebelled. Too soon. He told himself she’d never be able to control the big horse, even with his whistles and his humming. She’d never be able to ride him well enough to show Jamey what he needed to see, even though she’d progressed so quickly it took his breath away.
But what if she could? He’d know whether Roman was the horse Jock had been breeding for all his life, the horse he’d come to steal. And if Hamish couldn’t get together enough money to offer Mike Whitten a decent price for him, then Jamey would be forced to do just that.
He didn’t want to make a decision if that decision meant the end of his time with Vic. Honor and loyalty bound him to Jock.
Love bound him to Vic.
No.
Couldn’t be love. He’d known her just over a week. He’d kissed her a couple of times, held her, touched her, flirted and joked with her. Most of the time he’d worked beside her and sweated with her. Love required more than that—more time, more involvement, more intimacy.
Even as he thought the word, he realized she was a more intimate part of his life than any woman he’d ever known. He’d shared her terror and her exultation. He’d seen her lose and helped her win. He knew her. She’d laid herself soul-bare to him.
And what had he given her in return but lies and duplicity?
More than anything he’d ever felt in his life before, he wanted to take her in his arms and blurt out the whole stupid tale. Somehow he’d have to find a way. But he’d lost so much. Did he dare take the chance of losing her before he’d even won her?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A
LBERT. VIC AND JAMEY had barely begun to fill water buckets the following morning when Kevin Womack’s Mercedes purred to a stop in front of the barn. Kevin vaulted out and ran to Vic. “Where’s Angie?”
Vic looked at him in confusion. “At home having breakfast, I assume.”
“The hell she is. Listen, Vic, if she’s here or up at the big house, you’ve got to tell me. I’m going nuts.”
Albert turned to stare at Kevin, forgot he held the water hose in his hand and liberally doused Jamey’s paddock boots.
“Hell, man, that’s freezing!” Jamey said, and danced out of the way.
“Sorry. Here. Take this thing. Finish up.” He handed Jamey the hose. “Angie’s not here, Kevin,” he said. “Why did you think she was?”
Kevin sat down on the nearest tack trunk and ran his hand through his unruly salt-and-pepper hair.
Vic could see now that he was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot. “You need some coffee. Bad night? Too many babies?”
“I’ve been home, not at the hospital.” He raised his bleak gaze to Vic. “She’s really not here? Did she call?”
“Kevin, I have neither seen nor heard from Angie in days. I assumed she was staying away until her collarbone felt better. She hates being out here and not being able to ride. I think you’d better explain what this is all about.” She called to Jamey, “Has the coffee in the lounge finished brewing?”
He nodded.
“Bring Kevin a cup, will you? Black, lots of sugar.”
Jamey walked the hose back to the wash rack, turned off the tap and went to the office. In a moment he returned with a large steaming mug. He handed it to Kevin without a word.
Kevin cradled it in both hands, blew on it for a moment, then took a tentative sip. “She walked out last night, Vic.”
“Angie? Walk out on you? I don’t believe it. You two are the happiest couple I know.”
Albert rumbled agreement.
“It’s true. We had a hell of an argument.” Kevin took a deep breath. “All we do these days is argue. And Angie cries and we make up and it starts all over again. It’s getting so I look forward to going to the hospital at two in the morning to deliver a baby.”
“You always look forward to delivering babies.”
“Not at two in the morning, I don’t.”
“Have you called the police?” Albert asked.
Kevin shook his head. “They’d say she was a grown woman. They’re right. She hasn’t been kidnapped or anything.” He caught his breath and stared at Albert. “At least I don’t think she has. I mean, she walked out without anything but her purse and coat. I thought she’d be back after she cooled down. I’ve been sitting in the living room waiting for her all night.”
“Did you call her car phone?” Vic asked.
“About a million times. She had it turned off.”
“Who else did you call?”
“Every girlfriend I could think of, her mom... I decided to wait a couple of hours, let her cool off and drive out here. I really thought she’d be with you and I was afraid you wouldn’t tell me if she was. She’s always come to you when she had a problem.”
“Since she and Liz were eleven years old. But not this time. I promise you, I’m not hiding her somewhere. She probably checked into a motel somewhere to get some sleep.”
“And punish me some more.”
“Kevin, is this by any chance about the baby?”
“See, I knew she’d talk to you. Did she tell you I’m being a jerk?”
“Yes, something along those lines.” Vic looked up and saw both men listening avidly. Albert was an old friend, but Jamey was a virtual stranger to Angie and Kevin. She nodded at Albert. He shook his head and raised his eyes to heaven.
“Go on up to the house,” he said. “Me and him—” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Jamey “—we’ll finish up here.”
Vic pulled Kevin up and linked her arm in his. “You need some food, young man. Let’s go get you some.” She shoved him into the front seat of her truck and climbed in herself. He didn’t say anything on the ride up the hill, just rested his cheek on his hand and stared out the window at the frosty morning.
In the house Vic poured him another large cup of coffee and popped four slices of bread into the toaster. She poured a large glass of orange juice, set it in front of him and sat down across from him. “Okay. Give.”
He took a deep breath. “Look, let’s try to find her before we do anything else. I’m worried sick. If something’s happened to her, I’ll kill myself.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. Nothing’s happened to her except that she’s holed up somewhere.”
“What makes you think it’s about the baby?” Kevin said belligerently.
“You’ve never fought before that I’m aware of. Now suddenly she walks out. What else could it be about? Why on earth don’t you want the baby?”
“God, you already know everything. It’s not that I don’t want the baby. Or
a
baby.
Our
baby. If Angie could get pregnant, it would be the greatest thing in the world, but that’s not going to happen. I know how much she wants kids. Me, too, although I’ve had to soft-peddle that so she wouldn’t feel guilty.”
“It’s her fault?”
“It’s nobody’s fault, although she blames herself. I have plenty of viable sperm, she has viable eggs. We don’t connect. The best doctors don’t know why. It’s something chemical. I’ve tried to convince her it doesn’t matter. We love each other—or we did. Our lives are full.”
“But you filled out the adoption request. Why, when you obviously are dead set against adoption?”
“She badgered me into it. I thought I’d have plenty of time to talk her out of it, but it came through sooner than I expected. Now it looks as though we could get a baby from Shanghai in a couple of months. Maybe less.”
“What is it you don’t want? A girl? A Chinese child?”
“Oh, Vic, I’ve never seen a baby I didn’t adore. I don’t give a damn if a baby is pink with purple polka dots. It’s beautiful.”
“But still, not for you. Angie says you’re afraid she’ll be a terrible mother, that you don’t want to inflict her on an innocent child.”
“What? That’s crazy! She never told me she thought that.”
“Well, she told me,” Vic said. “So that’s not it?”
Kevin shook his head. “Okay, I better just lay it out for you. It’s going to sound crazy to you, but I don’t want to see her hurt.”
“Hurt?”
“Angie looks tough, but inside she’s a marshmallow.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You don’t know this, but I have—had-an older brother. Sam. Two years older. My parents were just like Angie and me. They tried to have a baby and couldn’t, so they went through a private adoption agency and they adopted Sam.”
“Then two years later you came along?”
“Yeah. It happens. The pressure’s off or something.”
“And you hated Sam, is that it?”
“No. I was crazy about Sam. Everybody was. He was smart and good-looking. He taught me to play baseball and to chase girls. My mom and dad were batty about him. I was kind of little and weasely, you know, but Sam...”
“You must have been jealous.”
“The normal sibling-rivalry junk, sure. But he was my big brother. I knew he was adopted. So did he. It was never a secret.”
“So what happened?”
“What I have since discovered happens all the time when adopted kids reach sixteen or seventeen. One day out of the clear blue sky, Sam announced he was going on a quest—to find his real parents.” Kevin growled. “What the hell did he think Mom and Dad were? What constitutes ‘real’?”
“Did it upset them?”
“Oh, they hid it well, but I could tell it hurt. Dad said he understood, that he’d help any way he could. Mom said the same thing, but that night I heard her crying. Sam was completely oblivious. All he could see was his damn quest. He had to find his blasted roots.”
“Surely you can understand that.”
“If he’d wanted to find out if he had heart disease or cancer in his background, or inherited some gene problems, I could understand.”
“There speaks the physician. It never occurred to you that finding out about his psychological roots could be as important to him as finding out whether he was likely to die of prostate cancer? Come on, Kevin.”
“Hey, he never said he wanted to check to see whether there was schizophrenia in the family. His ‘real’ family. That’s what frosted me. He kept talking about maybe having some ‘real brothers and sisters.’ Wanting to find out why his ‘real’ mother gave him up. The usual bull.”
Vic grimaced. “Pretty insensitive, I’ll grant you. But then, adolescents are insensitive, Kevin. I was. No doubt you were, too.” She looked at him closely. “What do you mean the usual bull?”
“Sam started dragging me along to these meetings of his. A bunch of adopted kids, all of whom were destroying the people who raised them by looking for their biological parents.”
“Kevin, if he hadn’t felt you were his brother, do you think he’d have taken you with him? That’s not a betrayal.”
“The hell it’s not. It killed my mother.”
“Surely not.”
“She’d never had a minute’s illness, and four years later she had a perforated duodenal ulcer and bled to death on the table. He killed her as surely as if he’d put a gun to her head and blown her brains out. And I told him so at the funeral.”
“My God, Kevin, you didn’t!”
Kevin looked away with real pain in his eyes. “Yeah, I did.”
“What did your father say?”
“He got mad at
me
.”
“I’m sure you were hurting, but you should never have said anything like that, Kevin.”
He sighed. “I still think it’s the truth, but the minute the words came out of my mouth I regretted them. I couldn’t take them back, so I stormed out. I’ve never spoken to Sam since. I see my father only when I know Sam isn’t going to be there.”
“Kevin, that’s awful! He’s your family. Haven’t you tried to speak to him?”
“He’s not my family any longer. My mother once told me it’s easy to forgive people for what they do to you. What’s hard is forgiving yourself for what you’ve done to them.”
“Wise woman, your mother.”
“It’s too late now.”
“I’m so sorry. Did Sam find his mother?”
“Sure did. And she didn’t know who the father was.” There was an edge of satisfaction in his tone that raised Vic’s eyebrows to her hairline. “The point is,” he continued, “that I’m not about to let some beautiful baby walk into our lives, and just when we love her so much we can’t stand it, she ups and says she’s going back to China because we’ve deprived her of not only her roots but her cultural heritage.” Kevin held up his hand. “And don’t tell me it can’t happen, because it does every day.”
“But most kids, if they find their roots, come back, curiosity satisfied, and reaffirm their relationship with the family that brought them up. Sam came back to your father, didn’t he?”
“Oh, sure, they come blithely home, and the parents they betrayed never let them see how badly they’re hurt, just the way my mother never let Sam see. I won’t let Angie face that.”
“Well, Kevin, I think you’re absolutely right,” Vic said.
Kevin gaped. “You do?”
“Absolutely. If you feel every time you look at your baby girl that she’s a time bomb waiting to blow you and Angie out of the water, you’ll never commit to loving her, to being a father to her. She’ll be the original self-fulfilling prophecy. You better believe she’ll walk out on you the minute she can. So would I. So would anybody.”
“I’d be a good father,” Kevin said, obviously annoyed.
“Right.”
“It’s just that I love Angie too much to risk seeing her hurt.”
“Kevin, she’s hurt now, and I don’t mean the broken collarbone.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“I’m not at all certain she will—not until you two talk this out. Okay, Doctor, let’s say you do manage to get Angie pregnant. She has a baby girl that’s yours genetically. What do you think is going to happen when that little girl hits fourteen or fifteen?”
“She’s going to be a normal teenager.”
Vic rolled her eyes. “A normal teenage girl is a combination of the monster from the black lagoon and all three witches from
McBeth
. Girls have a genius for spotting the weakest chink in their parents’ armor. They’ll go for it every time. It scares them, but it gives them a feeling of power. I did it. Liz did it. Angie did it. I made my grandmother’s life sheer unadulterated hell. I blamed her for everything from my bad-hair days to my mother and father dying in a plane crash.”
“But—”
“No, you listen up. You’re an obstetrician, not a pediatrician. You catch ’em, smack their bottoms and never see them again. You don’t have to consider how they turn out. Kids are the greatest joy in life. They are also the greatest heartache. And it doesn’t matter one bit whether the kid is yours genetically or not. They’ll still put you through hell while they’re trying to grow up. The only thing that will change is the weapons they use.