Mr. Miracle. Carolyn McSparren
expect to stay anyplace long enough to need one.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Because I’m having a midlife crisis. I’ve left my stepfather’s farm in Scotland to work my way around the world from horse farm to horse farm. I want to see all of it—the world, that is. I bought the BMW in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s cheaper than a car, and I like sleeping rough.”
“So you just show up here? Just driving down the road and, voilà, here you are?”
He grinned. “You’re too suspicious for your own good.” He reached his left hand into the pocket of his jacket.
Vic eyed his hand suspiciously.
He caught her glance and grinned that wild grin again. “I’m not reaching for my forty-five. We Scots don’t go in much for firearms, and a man can’t hide a dirk or a claymore in this getup without doing himself an injury.” He brought out a white envelope. “Here, read it. You’ll know why I showed up here.”
Vic reached out with two fingers and took the envelope, looked at it and blinked. She glanced up at him. “It’s addressed to me.”
“Yes.”
“What’s it say?”
“Read it. It won’t bite.”
She pulled the single sheet of fine vellum from the envelope and read. “Dear Vic,” the letter began. “This is to introduce a good friend of mine, Jamey McLachlan. I’ve known him for twenty years and trust him implicitly. He’s a good man, even if he has gone a bit middle-aged crazy at the moment. He’s got a mad drive to see the world on the back of a motorcycle and a horse. I can vouch for his honesty and his expertise. I hope you can convince him to give up this insane idea of riding himself around the world and get him to come home to Scotland and go back to work training my horses. In the meantime, try to see that he doesn’t starve. Give him a job if you’ve got one. He’s a fine rider and a hard worker. Sincerely, Marshall Dunn.”
“Marshall Dunn?” Vic looked up. “I haven’t heard from him in five years. How do I know this is genuine?”
“You don’t. But it is and so am I. Call him up and check it out if you like. I may not stay more than a month or so, but I’m hoping you could use some help. Am I right?”
“How much?”
“A bed, money to pay for my food and the occasional beer—although what you Americans call beer is definitely not the beverage I’m used to—and if I serve you well, a decent reference to one of your friends when I leave.”
“Will you stay for two months if it works out between us?”
Jamey caught his breath. He’d been making do with small duplicities, but this would be his first big lie. He didn’t like lying to her. She was a fine woman, tall and handsome and bright and full of spirit.
He found the challenge in her direct gaze disturbing. He did not need the additional complication of actually responding to her physically. He forced his mind back to his negotiations.
“My guess is you’ve got more to do here than you’ve hands for,” he continued. Nobody should be running a place this big alone, or even with one or two people. He had ten to fifteen working for him at home even in the lean times. Most of them were his uncles and his cousins, but they still required salaries. He steeled himself and said, “All right, if we work out, I’ll stay two months. But there’s something you need to know.”
“Uh-huh, thought so. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?”
“Indeed there is. This is mine.” He pulled his right hand from the pocket of his jeans, held it in front of him and peeled the glove off with his left.
Vic looked at the crooked fingers, the scarred and mangled skin, and felt her stomach lurch. She fought to keep from shuddering.
“Sorry, should have warned you. It’s not pretty,” he said with an edge of bitterness. “I can exercise any horse you choose, ride them over fences, work them on the lunge line and on the flat. What I can’t do is the fine rein work—the tricky little dressage stuff that makes a decent horse into a brilliant one. I haven’t the motor skills any longer, do you see?” He slid the glove back over his hand.
Vic nodded at the hand. “How did it happen?”
“Got it caught in a hay baler. By the time they got the thing stopped and unwound me from it, it had pretty much mangled my hand and arm. The doctors spent a good long time putting everything back in place, but there’s only so much they can do. I’ve done physical therapy now for two years. This is as good as it’s going to get.”
“So you wear your gloves.
“Okay. I pick the horse. You have about thirty minutes to ride before we have to turn on the lights in the arena. If you can ride to suit me, and if you’re willing to sleep in the groom’s room behind the hayloft and work like a navvy on anything and everything I put you to, then...”
“Then, lass?”
She held out her right hand. “Then we shake on it.”
This time he was the one caught off guard. He pulled his wounded hand in its black glove out of his jeans pocket and extended it.
Looking resolutely into his eyes, Vic took his mangled hand and shook it. “After that,” she said, “it’s boss-lass to you, laddie.”
As they passed the office door, the telephone rang. “Oh, bother,” Vic said. “Look, go pick a horse—any horse you like. You’ll find a clean saddle pad in the tack room and there’s a saddle you can use on the wash rack. I’ll find you a bridle when I get there.”
“That’s all right. I brought my own saddle on the back of the motorcycle.”
She nodded as she answered the telephone.
“Vic, it’s Kevin.”
“Kevin, how is Angie?”
“Arm in a sling, mad as a wet hen that she’s let you down, depressed as hell and half-drunk on dope.” He sounded almost bitter. “I should have called yesterday, but I had three babies to deliver.”
It didn’t sound like Kevin at all. He was known to all and sundry as Saint Kevin, Angie’s obstetrician/gynecologist husband who provided Angie with unlimited funds, supported her at every turn and never lost his cool no matter how exasperating she became.
“I’m so sorry it happened, Kevin.”
“She says it was her fault. Not thinking.” He snorted. “Thinking too damned much is more like it.”
“Oh?”
Vic heard his sigh down the phone lines. “Sorry, Vic, got to go. Angie’ll be out sometime tomorrow to pick up her car.” He hung up.
Vic sat with her hand on the receiver. Now what was that about? Trouble in paradise?
Maybe that was why Angie had fallen off a horse that normally would not have been able to buck off a four-year-old child.
Well, Vic thought, pulling herself up, it was none of her business. She had enough on her plate without playing marriage counselor to Kevin and Angie. She went to find Jamey McLachlan.
Angie Womack’s big jumper, Trust Fund, stood on the wash rack with his saddle in place, but Jamey was nowhere to be found. Vic listened for the sound of his footsteps and heard...nothing. Even Mr. Miracle had gone silent. Good Lord! Surely the man had sense enough not to mess with a strange stallion, especially one the size of an eighteen-wheeler.
She ran outside toward the stallion paddock. If that damned man had gotten himself trampled to death, she’d kill him.
In the gathering twilight she saw them, so black that only Jamey’s olive skin glowed in the twilight. She stood still and watched. The stallion—all nineteen hands and two thousand pounds of