She stood with her back to him and said softly, “Listen, about what we did tonight... I don’t want anyone else to know.”
“Of course, lass.” His chair thumped to the floor. He got up and went to her, took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.
“Everyone would be so helpful, cheering me on and secretly worrying I’d fail again. I don’t think I could stand that.”
“Our secret,” he said. “As long as you want it to be.”
“Besides, riding double on a mare as broad as a pool table and with about as much pizzazz is hardly the same as sitting on Angie’s Trust Fund.”
“It’s only a matter of degree.”
She slipped out of his grasp. “I may never be able to face jumping a fence again.”
“One thing at a time.”
“I’m going to bed. I feel as though I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet.”
“So do I.” He kneaded the muscles at the small of his back. “We’re not teenagers any longer, you and I.”
“Well, I’m not, certainly.”
Minutes later she stripped and stood under the water from her shower with her face raised. At least a portion of the water that flowed down her cheeks and over her shoulders was salt from the gush of tears she couldn’t seem to stern. She felt as though a dam had broken somewhere deep within her, and she was standing in the path of a flood that threatened to wash her away.
How long had she worked to convince herself that riding didn’t matter? That she was a valuable person without it? That her failure did not completely circumscribe her very being? How long since she had even allowed herself to think about it or to question the status quo? She and everyone around her tiptoed around the issue, but like the proverbial elephant in the corner, it was there, whether she acknowledged it or not, and suddenly for no reason it had begun to trumpet.
No. There was a reason. Jamey McLachlan. He’d turned her world upside down, questioned her assumptions, refused to accept her view of herself the way everybody else did. Why couldn’t he?
He left her miserably uncomfortable. She remembered how comfortable she’d grown with the walking cast on her leg in the hospital. She’d learned to compensate for its weight and the changes in her balance. She used her crutches like an expert.
Then one day the cast had been cut away. She was left with an emaciated, goat-cheese white leg that refused to respond. She had to releam balance, fight the endless pain of therapy, the agony of new demands on her body. There had been times—too many—when she’d longed to have the nice safe cast back again. Times when she had fought to move her knee one more centimeter while the tears ran down her face.
This was worse. This pain was psychic—soul pain. And the muscles had not been used for more than twenty years. Agony.
Was it worth it?
She leaned against the back wall of the shower. She had a good comfortable life among people who accepted her. If she attempted this and failed, she’d have another weight to add to the one she already carried. If she attempted it and succeeded, she’d have to redefine herself in everyone’s eyes.
More agony.
She leaned down and flicked the shower off, then turned off the taps. She stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and glimpsed her naked body in the steamy mirror.
Suddenly she wondered if she’d have the nerve to show her body to a man again. Not a bad body—still slim and well-toned, but not the nubile body of a twenty-year-old. “Gravity, you bastard!”
What would Jamey McLachlan think if she actually did creep up those stairs and slide into bed with him?
He’d probably run for the barn, dragging his pillow and blanket behind him.
And if he slept naked? Lovely sight. The clothes he wore didn’t leave much room for the imagination. And the feel of his arms around her! Lord, it would be almost worth the terror of getting back on a horse just to feel those arms locked around her again. He made her feel so safe.
And that was a different feeling for her. Usually she was the one who made other people feel safe. And she always projected a calm, rational, oh-so-sensible persona. Even Angie, who ought to know better, looked to her for marriage counseling.
Meanwhile, Vic spent her life trying to act as though she was indispensable, because if anybody ever caught on to the fact that she was just about the most dispensable creature on God’s earth, they might do just that with her—dispense.
Jamey McLachlan had tuned in to the frightened creature that lurked inside her. And it didn’t seem to bother him any more than Mr. Miracle’s bad manners had.
Funny, that remark about her being just another animal should have rankled, but in a way she took comfort in it. She was no different from Stripes—crawling up Jamey’s shirtfront to purr in his ear. Something about him said, “Trust me, I will not hurt you.” And something in her answered, “I will.”
As she toweled her hair and pulled a comb through it, she asked herself again, Was it worth it?
“Damn straight!” she said, and flung her wet towel at the towel rack.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“T
HERE’S CROCUSES breaking through the dead leaves on the lawn. In February. I cannot believe it!” Jamey shouted.
“We’ll have jonquils in bloom in another week,” Vic said easily. “We’ll also probably have at least one or two snows and maybe an ice storm or two, interspersed with days when you’d swear you were in the middle of April. What’s it like now where you come from?”
“We’re close enough to the coast to get the warm winds from the Irish Channel, but it’s still bitterly cold in winter. The days are short. Life slows down, but the chores are harder. We spend as much time as possible trying to keep warm.”
“No central heating?”
“Not the kind you’re used to. We use peat fires. Wonderful smell, but it’s roast on the front and freeze on the backside.”
“Yuck.”
“Ah, but I’d like to show you May. The tenderest days you ever saw and the gorse yellow as butter pats.”
“And heather?”
“In May? Not bloody likely. Heather’s August. Have you never been to Scotland?”
“Never. I’ve been to England, of course, but so many years ago it hardly counts.”
They worked side by side down the aisles, cleaning out the stalls and refreshing the shavings. They had slipped into an easy rhythm that allowed them to chat along the way.
“It’s lovely up Oban way with rhododendrons big as houses, otters in the ponds...”
“Sheep?”
“Indeed. Now’s lambing time. Mad for sheep to give birth in this weather, but that’s what they do. Makes the wool thicker, so they say.” Jamey dumped a wheelbarrow full of clean shavings into the center of the stall in which they worked and began to flick them to the sides with easy strokes of his manure fork.
“And your family? They have sheep?”
“My stepfather’s family has a fair amount of everything. Or had.”
Vic glanced over at him. The tone of his voice shut the subject down as totally as though he had punched the off switch on a computer.
“And your father?” Vic persisted.
“Long dead. And a complete bastard, from what I hear. I was a baby when my stepfather adopted me.” He leaned for a moment on his fork. “I owe him my life and all my loyalty.”
Odd choice of words.
All my loyalty. My life?
“What does the rest of your family think about your odyssey to see the world on the back of a horse?”
“They think I’m crazy.” He said the words flatly with no hint of humor. “Maybe I am, but I’ve no choice. I pay my debts.”
“What debts?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She opened her mouth to press him further, although he obviously didn’t want to talk about his life or his family. She was a Southern woman. She wanted to place him carefully where he belonged in his dynasty. She swore to winkle out his story before he left.
Left? The sudden pain of the word startled her. She didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. Perhaps never. She looked forward to seeing him in the morning, to finding his notes propped on the coffeepot. There might never be another wild kiss like the one after the poker game, but it had awakened longings in her she had long forgotten.
“Why haven’t you remarried?” he asked with that weird facility he had for reading her mind. “Your husband’s been dead several years now, hasn’t he?”
“Nobody’s asked me.”
That wasn’t quite right. There was a man. When ValleyCrest was at its lowest ebb financially, Vic had even considered marrying him. He had plenty of money, rode to hounds and could probably have been convinced to offer his hand if she’d pursued the matter. And been willing to sleep with him, which she hadn’t been.
Not that her marriage to Frank had been such a great passion. But she swore that if she ever considered marriage again, it would be to a man who at least occasionally considered her needs before his own. Vachel Connaway might dance attendance and send her flowers, but he was spoiled rotten and bone lazy.
He was between wives again, having been summarily dumped by wife number three, and he still called from time to time. Vic enjoyed his company, but felt no stirrings of desire for him. Everybody said he was a great catch—rich and good-looking and only in his midsixties—about the youngest man who would be interested in a forty-nine-year-old widow with callused palms.
That Jamey McLachlan stirred her blood frightened her a bit. Angie was right. To a saddle burn, she probably looked like a good catch. She’d certainly proved to be malleable. One whistle and he was installed in her house and dragging her up on a horse when no one had been able to manage it before.
She’d have to guard her heart carefully.
Jamey worked beside her and thought the same thing. Last night, instead of sneaking back down to the arena to ride Roman under saddle as he’d sworn he’d do, he had, instead, slid naked into bed and dreamed of making love to her.
At first it had been a wonderfully sexy dream, until he reached out to caress her breast with his mangled hand. The look of revulsion on her face brought him awake in a cold sweat. How could he make love to her with a glove on? She’d taken his hand that first day to seal their bargain, but he figured she’d repressed her shudder because she was a lady. A far cry from allowing him to touch her lovely smooth skin with the tips of his mangled fingers.
“Hey, Vic, where you at?” boomed a deep voice.
“Oh, Lord!” Vic said. She raised wide scared eyes. “It’s Albert! You stay here!” She dropped her manure fork, darted out of the stall and ran down the center aisle toward the door. “What on earth are you doing out of bed?”
“I’m feeling a little better. You can’t go on doing all this by yourself.”
“I’m managing beautifully,” Vic said with a show of ease. “See?” She raised her hands and turned in a circle. “Stalls mucked out, buckets washed, aisles swept—everything neat. The horses are all outside.”
“Where’s Mr. Miracle?” Albert punctuated his words with a deep cough. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“He’s silent as a lamb out in his pasture. Take a look if you don’t believe me.” She put her hand under Albert’s arm and half dragged him to the arena door where he could see Mr. Miracle munching his way through the dry February grass.
“Well, I’ll be. You dope him up or what?”
“He’s just settled down. Now, you go on home right this minute before you infect me!”
“Huh. Looks like you don’t need me. Kenny said you sent him off, too.”
“Albert, my dear, I always need you, but not when you’re sick. You go on home and don’t even think of coming back for at least three days, you hear? I do not need to get the flu, and you’re probably contagious as the dickens. Can you drive?”
“I got here, didn’t I?” Albert said with a disgruntled snort. “How come you’re always complaining about how much we got to do when there’s two of us, and here you are doing it all alone and happy as a clam?”
“Adrenaline.” She shoved him. “Now go.”
“Who’s that motorcycle belong to?” Albert said with sudden suspicion.
“One of the clients is leaving it here until he gets a place for it cleaned up in his garage.”
“Which one? We don’t have any clients dumb enough to ride motorcycles. Horses are bad enough.”
“Uh...Kevin Womack.” She shoved him out the door. “Bye, Albert You’re a darling to try to come back to work so quickly, but really, you need your strength.”
“Something’s going on here, Vic. What you been up to?”
“Me?” Vic said with wide-eyed innocence. “Just working my little tail off and trying to stay well. Now git!”
He grumbled some more, but finally got in his truck and drove slowly out of the driveway. Vic watched him with her heart in her throat before she went back inside.
“Jamey?” she called.
“What was that about?” he said as he poked his head out of the stall door. “You’re acting like a schoolgirl whose daddy caught her in bed with her boyfriend. You afraid of that man?”
Vic sank onto the nearest tack trunk. “Certainly not. He’s my oldest friend. I’m simply too busy to go into a bunch of explanations.”
“You don’t have hiring and firing privileges around here?”
“Of course I do. But if Albert finds out, he’ll call Liz and Mike in Florida. Liz will call me and want to come home to check you out. Frankly I’m sick of justifying my decisions to the entire western world.”
“The kids know, Angie knows, the clients know.”
“I realize that. But the longer I can keep you a secret from my nosy family—of whom Albert is very much a member—the easier it will be for all concerned. Trust me on this.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Fine. It’s your call. He is a very large man, isn’t he?”
Vic laughed. “Extremely. Kind, gentle and generous unless someone tries to hurt one of us.”
“Like my uncle Hamish. Roughly the same size, although Hamish is probably a few years older and comes in Viking red. He’s my stepfather’s younger brother and firmly believes that loyalty to one’s clan did not end with the Forty-five.”
“What’s the Forty-five?”
Jamey gaped. “The Uprising of 1745? The Battle of Culloden in 1746? The Harrowing of the Glens when the British massacred the clans and froze them and starved them? You don’t know about the Forty-five?”
“Oh. That Forty-Five.” She laughed. “That’s exactly the way Southerners speak of the Late Unpleasantness between the North and South. Not that much difference between our lost causes, I suppose.”
“But we’ll get Scotland back one of these days. We’re coming closer all the time.”
“I’d love to see it.”
He nearly said, “I’ll take you.” It was exactly what he wanted to say, what he wanted to do, but he knew that once he was gone, she’d never want to see or hear of him again except possibly to press charges.
“I’ve got one more horse to ride before the youngsters show up after school,” he said, and set his fork against the wall. “Rom...the stallion.”
“Oh, dear. You sure?”
“He’s just a horse.”
“A huge young untrained horse overflowing with testosterone. I’ve ridden plenty of stallions. Hard to keep their attention.”
“He’ll pay attention. I guarantee it.”
An hour later as Jamey cooled the stallion down by walking him around in the ring on a loose rein, Vic had to concede that Jamey, as usual, had been right. “He’s got no more manners than a warthog,” she said, “but he does move superbly, at least with you on him.”
“He’ll move even better with you aboard. I don’t have the hands to control him properly.”
“Oh, yeah, right, like I’m ever going to ride him.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
She looked at his lopsided grin, the tilt of his head, the lift of his eyebrow. “You know, I do not have the faintest idea.”
THAT EVENING Vic did everything in her power to make Jamey forget that he intended to get her back on a horse. She stayed busy on the telephone at the far end of the stable. Her heart lurched every time she thought of attempting to repeat last evening’s performance. Jamey’s holding her against his body again was lovely, but not if she was too busy hyperventilating and throwing up to enjoy it.
“Time for dinner,” she said blithely. “What say we drive into town and get a cheap steak somewhere?”
He shook his head slowly. “Did you think I’d fall for such a transparent trick?” He pointed behind him. The mare stood on the wash rack in the enormous saddle, her head drooping in the cross-ties, already half-asleep.
“I can’t.”
“You did.”
“A fluke.”
“No. Not a fluke. Come on, follow me out to the ring. The night is as tender and fragile as a virgin maid of sixteen. If you’re right about the snow and ice storms to come, then we’d best enjoy this night while we can.”
He climbed aboard and took his left foot out of the stirrup. “Get up on the mounting block and put your foot in the stirrup,” he said. “If you’re going to ride again, you can’t do it facing backward with your arms around my neck, pleasant though that may be for me.”
“I can’t.”
He reached out to her. “You’re going to have to move your right leg over her neck to get to the other stirrup. If you try to do it the normal way you’ll do me an injury that’ll have me limping for weeks.”
She felt her breathing become labored, her heart speed, the palpitations, the knot at the base of her throat, the hot and cold flashes, the nausea—all of it.
“Your hand to my hand. Your eye to my eye,” he said softly. “Look at me. Give me your hand.”
Later she had no memory of mounting, of sliding her feet into the stirrups. She remembered only Jamey’s soft voice in her ear, his strong arms around her holding her against his body, the smell of his sweat mixed with the sweet odor of molasses from the feed.