Mr. Miracle. Carolyn McSparren
get killed. I don’t even know if he’s saddle broke.”
“I can tell he’s saddle broke, all right, but beyond that I have no idea.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Well, somebody’s got to do it sometime, lass, unless you expect this boy to lollygag around in a pasture until somebody snips his groceries and makes him into a gelding—and that, if you’ll forgive my saying so, would be an awful thing.”
“Men! I promise if he kills you I’ll bury your corpse under the manure and deny I ever knew you.”
“Fair enough, lass. Now open that gate for me.”
Vic watched from the arena fence as Jamey began to lunge the stallion, sending him galloping away in a large circle at the end of the lunge line. The moment he hit the end he began to buck—huge, snorting crow-hops, kicking out with his hind legs.
“Good!” Jamey said as the horse began to race around the arena.
“Yes,” Vic said.
Jamey looked at her questioningly.
“Listen, you, I do know my business,” she said. “He’s just a juvenile delinquent who doesn’t know his job, but he’s not vicious. And somebody somewhere has tried to teach him manners.”
“Indeed they have.” Much better than he’d had any reason to hope, Jamey thought. He clicked and chirruped, called “trot” and amazingly enough, the horse slowed to a wild uncoordinated trot.
“Good Lord,” Vic said. “Look at that trot. It’s downright gorgeous! That’s no jumper, that’s a dressage champion—or will be once he finds out where his feet are.”
“Agreed.” Jamey clucked again and watched the horse settle to a long-limbed walk. He reversed the stallion and went through the same permutations once more. Then he called to Vic, “Give me a leg up here.”
“Now I know you’re nuts. You’ve ridden what—a dozen horses today? You must be rubber-legged.”
He cocked his head. “You know, you’re right. That’s enough. I’ve still got to work out where I’m sleeping tonight.”
“Where you slept last night, obviously,” Vic said. “That room behind the hayloft is no cleaner than it was yesterday.”
“I swept up the mouse droppings,” Jamey said.
“You didn’t get rid of ‘eau de mouse.”’
Jamey shrugged. “Now there you have me. Give me a bed tonight, and tomorrow I’ll scrub the room down with disinfectant and deodorant. And if you’ll allow me to take you out to dinner this evening as part payment for the bed.”
Vic shook her head. “Nope. I’m much too tired. I will, however, split a pizza with you. Deal?”
“Deal.”
They settled the stallion, then walked out of the stable side by side. Jamey tossed Vic a rider’s black velvet hard hat. “Here. This is for your ride up the hill on the BMW this evening.”
Vic shook her head. “No way. Tonight we go by truck. My truck. I drive. And then you can take it to pick up the pizza. They refuse to deliver this far out in the country.”
“Then I’ll put the bike in the stable, shall I? And lock the door?”
“Be my guest, but we don’t have many thieves. Open the tailgate on the truck so the dogs can hop up for the ride home. Oh, and you may have to pick Max’s rear end up. Basset hounds are not the world’s best leapers.”
JAMEY FOLLOWED Vic’s directions to the Italian restaurant. While he waited for the pizza to come out of the oven, he found a pay telephone by the rest rooms and called his farm in Scotland collect. After half a dozen rings and his uncle Hamish’s disgruntled agreement to accept the charges, Hamish sputtered, “Good God, lad, do you have any idea what time it is here?”
“Sorry, Uncle Hamish. This is the first chance I’ve had for a private chat. The horse is everything I hoped—at least he seems to be so far.”
“You’ve found him, then?” Hamish suddenly sounded fully awake.
“I think so.” Jamey gave him the story. “But don’t call me at ValleyCrest unless it’s an emergency. How are you and Uncle Vlado doing?”
“We’re fine. Everything’s all proper and accounted for. Nothing’s missing this time.”
“Nothing would’ve been missing last time if the pair of you had been in charge rather than my brother and my darling wife,” Jamey said.
“Aye, but just so you know. Have you ridden the beast?”
“Not yet Uncle Hamish, do you remember my last year in school when you and Jock took me with you to Hickstead for the horse trials? I must have been sixteen or so.”
“I remember Hickstead. I don’t remember any year in particular.”
“The Americans came in second. There was a woman rider named Victoria Jamerson riding for them. On a big gray gelding.”
“Humph.” Hamish was silent for a moment. “Beautiful girl with the devil’s own nerve, the sweetest softest hands I’ve ever seen, and a seat...” He sighed. “I remember wishing I could have that seat on my lap.” He chortled, and Jamey smiled at the telephone. “Married to a big fat brute of a trainer who yelled a lot. Why?”
Jamey explained.
“Terrible!” Hamish said. “A woman like that belongs on a horse.”
“If I have my way about it, Uncle Hamish, that’s where she’s going to be—sitting on top of Roman and showing him to me.”
“You’re mad! Steal the brute if you must and bring him home. Don’t get yourself mixed up with these gaja.”
Jamey let out such a burst of laughter that a waitress walking by him jumped and stared at him in alarm. “You sound like Uncle Vlado! Don’t forget, Uncle Hamish, you’re Jock’s brother, not Vlado’s. You’re a gaja yourself.”
“Maybe, but I’m too smart to mix myself up in the lives of people who don’t matter to me or to the McLachlans, Jamey.”
“I’m not mixing myself up. I’m doing this because it suits my purposes. I’ll help her out for a couple of weeks, see him work with another rider up, teach him some manners, find out whether or not I can buy the horse myself and then, if I have to, I sneak him into a trailer at two in the morning and head for Texas.”
“Mm-hm.” Hamish did not sound convinced. “And be the first person they look to as a thief.”
“Trust me, Hamish, I’ll do whatever it takes to get Roman home. We will have Jock’s first Scottish sport horse foal on the ground by the millennium, I promise. If they sue me, I’ll deal with that and any other legal unpleasantness I have to. But I’ll deal from Scotland. I owe Jock that and more. Roman will stand as foundation stallion at McLachlan Yard. I promised Jock before he died. I keep my promises.”
CHAPTER FIVE
WHILE SHE WAITED for Jamey to come back with the pizza, Vic stood under a hot shower and washed her cap of short dark hair. When she’d dried herself, she reached for a violet sweater and a pair of dark gray flannel slacks that she generally only wore when she was going to town. In the mirror she stuck out her tongue at the streak of gray in her hair and wondered whether she should start coloring it.
She had given Jamey the keys to her truck without a moment’s hesitation, but after he drove out to get the pizza, she’d remembered Angie’s comments about con men. Of course, if he did decide to keep driving, she’d have his motorcycle. It—and his stuff upstairs—were probably worth much more than her