“Somehow everyone’s problems turn into yours.” Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY EPILOGUE Copyright

“Somehow everyone’s problems turn into yours.”

Jamey’s voice was gentle, but Victoria narrowed her eyes at him anyway. “Why do I get the feeling you think that’s my fault?”

He smiled at her blandly. “Would I imply such a thing? Still, you do spend a great deal of time smoothing out other people’s difficulties. Making sure there’s no time to deal with your own.”

“I beg your pardon. I thought dealing with my problem was what we’ve been doing every evening the minute we’re alone.”

“Oh, you’re making great strides. But that’s riding. Not life. Life is something entirely different.”

“And generally painful, from my experience.”

“But there’s joy, as well. And happiness, and even...love if you’re lucky.”

“Love? That lucky I’m definitely not.” She thrust her hands into her pockets and strode away from him.

“Don’t be too sure,” he whispered to her retreating back.

Dear Reader,

How many times have you heard that old saying, “People don’t change”? Same old job. Same old hang-ups. Our family and friends all laugh and roll their eyes when we say we want to change, try new things, experience personal growth.

Change is scary, yet we want to believe that all the possibilities still exist for us—greater love, deeper passion, bigger success, a more exciting career, a finer dream—if only we’re willing to fight for them.

In Mr. Miracle, Victoria Jamerson and Jamey McLachlan long to grow and change. Both have been hurt in the past and must face their personal demons before they can acknowledge and accept the feelings that are developing between them.

I hope you enjoy reading their story as much as I did writing it.

Carolyn McSparren

Mr. Miracle
Carolyn McSparren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Bobby Billingley, who got me back into the saddle after

years on the ground, and who continues to teach me about

stallions. Any mistakes are mine, not his.

In memory of Stone Cool Fox, a great Thoroughbred

and a great sire.

CHAPTER ONE

JAMEY MCLACHLAN was fairly certain they didn’t hang horse thieves in Tennessee any more.

But stealing a stallion would certainly be considered grand theft. So if he did become a thief, he’d better be a successful one if he didn’t fancy spending time in an American prison.

As he slowed his BMW motorcycle to read the sign at the entrance to the long gravel driveway, Jamey considered his options. Obviously the best way to get the horse back would be to buy it honestly, but he probably wouldn’t be able to raise enough capital. And, of course, the new owner might refuse to sell at any price. Jamey had learned that Michael Whitten had bought the horse in Belgium as a gift for his new bride. He’d probably paid a fair sum for the animal and would have had no way of knowing he was buying stolen goods.

Just in case Jamey had to resort to horse stealing, he already had a plan in place to smuggle the horse across the border into Mexico. From there he could ship Roman—once he was certain the horse was Roman—home to Scotland where he belonged. To McLachlan Yard outside Oban—the place he’d been stolen from as a yearling. Jamey had been searching for the horse the past two years, only to miss the sale in Belgium by a single day.

The stallion had officially turned four on New Year’s Day, just one month ago now. He was ready to fulfill the destiny that Jamey’s stepfather, Jock McLachlan, had envisioned for him: to be the foundation stallion for a great line of Scottish sport horses. Jamey only wished that Jock were still alive to see the culmination of his dream.

Jamey had made a vow to Jock’s memory that, by the year 2000, the first of Roman’s foals would be galloping through the paddocks at McLachlan Yard. He would keep that vow, even if he had to resort to deceit and theft to do it.

He’d find some way to make amends to the present owners once the stallion was safely back on his farm in Oban. Maybe he’d offer the Whittens that first foal. If the stallion was as fine as he hoped, the first foal would be worth a bundle. He’d been told Whitten had a young daughter. By the time the foal was big enough to ride, the girl should be looking for a large horse to see her through her teen years of showing.

Jamey studied the sign carefully. ValleyCrest Stables and Training Facility. Hunter/Jumper Horses. Board. Lessons. Victoria Jamerson, Trainer.

He’d been annoyed to discover that the horse had been shipped to this small out-of-the-way stable outside Memphis just before he’d arrived in Kentucky, where the horse had been in quarantine. Now he felt it might actually be a stroke of good luck in the long run. Probably little or no security here.

He could take his time, assess the stallion, perhaps work him a bit. He absolutely had to see another rider on the horse. No other way to judge his movements properly.

Whitten’s new wife, Liz, was purported to be an excellent rider, more than capable of handling a feisty young stallion. She was probably already exercising him every day. Jamey might be able to see enough of him to make an educated decision in a few days.

All he had to do was worm himself into the good graces of her aunt, Victoria Jamerson, who owned ValleyCrest. She’d had an international reputation as a rider at one time, but she’d suddenly dropped out of competition years ago.

Boarding stables always needed help. He’d work for his keep and stay only long enough to evaluate the stallion, find some quiet time to ride him and decide whether he should offer Michael Whitten a fair price for him.

Or whether he’d have to sneak a huge young horse onto a trailer in the middle of the night and literally run for the border.

The bile rose in his throat. He was definitely not cut out to be a confidence man. The thought of lying, taking advantage of these people, made him physically ill. His Romany grandmother had tried to instill in him her own Gypsy philosophy: taking advantage of the gaja—non-Gypsies—was a perfectly honorable way of life. As far as she was concerned, there could never be enough payback for centuries of persecution.

But his grandmother was of the old school. Until the day she died, his grandmother used to grumble about living in the same place and had refused to allow her family to sell the old horse-drawn caravan she’d lived in as a bride. Nobody else seemed to regret leaving the precarious life of the open road behind.

His uncles all held decent jobs, many working for him at McLachlan Yard. One of his cousins was a surgeon. Another was one of the leading veterinarians in Edinborough. All were respectable and prosperous, although he worried that a couple of his aunts sailed a bit close to the wind with their psychic hotline.

Jamey sat astride the BMW, unwilling to rev the engine, drive up to the stable and tell his first lie.

Finally he sighed and drove slowly up through the trees where he could see the front door of the stable without being seen.

The moment he cut his engine he heard it. The high demanding call of a stallion. He caught his breath.

Goodbye, James McLachlan, landowner, trainer, breeder, honest man. Enter Jamey McLachlan, forty-year-old saddle burn, Gypsy charmer, con artist, horse trainer extraordinaire.

Horse thief.

“ALBERT,” VICTORIA Jamerson snapped, “I don’t care how you do it, but for Pete’s sake, shut that blockhead of a stallion up!”

She pulled off her heavy leather work gloves and stuffed them into the waistband of her jeans, sank onto a handy tack trunk in front of one of the stalls and stretched her long legs in front of her. Exhausted, she glanced at her dusty paddock boots and ran her hand up under the short dark hair at the nape of her neck. “Listening to him wears me out. He’s way overdue to learn his manners.”

“Mr. Miracle, my foot. Pat should have named him Mr. Disaster,” Albert grumbled from the doorway of the barn. His silhouette half-filled the wide opening. The biceps of the café au lait arm that he leaned against the lintel was as big around as Vic’s waist. His height, weight and muscle gave him leverage in handling an oversize youngster like Mr. Miracle that Vic envied.

“I don’t think Pat saw anything but the size of him when he stormed off that trailer on his hind legs. The miraculous thing about him is that he doesn’t come with a trunk like an elephant.”

“Only way to shut him up is to lay a baseball bat upside his head.”

In spite of herself, Vic laughed. “Right. I can see you hurting an animal. That’ll be the day.”

“Nothing else is going to shut that fool’s mouth. He’s got every mare in four counties acting like he’s some kind of Tyrone Power.”

The stallion continued to whinny and trumpet his availability.

Vic put her hands over her ears. “I don’t think Mike had a clue what he was dumping on us when he took Liz and Pat off to Florida to compete for the winter season. How on earth are we going to put up with this noise for two whole months until they get back and agree to have him gelded?”

Albert shook his head. “Seems like a real shame, gelding a fine animal like that.”

“Fine animal, my eye. Good-for-nothing animal, you mean. You know he’s too dad-gummed big to be a jumper. At near nineteen hands he wouldn’t fit between the fences on a tight course even if he could fold up like an accordion. And he may still be growing.”

“Could be. He’s still a youngster,” Albert said. “Got to admit, he is one fine horse.”

“Oh, right. He has the manners of Genghis Khan. You and I together can barely waltz him from the stallion paddock to his stall and back again. Why on earth did Mike have to buy that particular horse?”

“Shoot,” Albert said. “He was the biggest, fanciest, feistiest horse Mike ever saw is why. Man’s got no sense about horses yet. Can’t expect him to. He’d never even been on a horse until six months ago when he fell in love with Liz. Cut him some slack, why don’t you?”

“I do, Albert,” Vic said, and latched her arm through his as they walked toward the stable. “I love both Mike and his child, but he should have had better sense than to go to a sale without Liz or me to advise him. Why couldn’t he have given her a nice safe diamond necklace for a wedding present?”

Albert laid his dark-skinned hand on her arm reassuringly. “Calm down. We’re gonna make it, Vic. We can handle the problems. They’ll be back from the Florida circuit in two months. That’s practically no time at all.”

She stopped dead and turned to face him with her hands on her slim hips. “How are we going to make it, Albert? I would really like to know.” She began to count on her fingers. “First, the workmen renovating the house are driving me nuts with decisions that ought to be made by Liz and Mike. Second, two days after they leave for Florida, Angie Womack breaks her collarbone and can’t exercise horses for us. Three, our stable help goes home to Juarez for Christmas and does not return, so you and I—both of whom are too old for this—are running the place single-handed. Four, half the horses here are on training board and are supposed to be ridden every day. Five, I am still not unpacked from moving house into Liz’s cottage so she and Mike and Pat can move into the big house when they come home. And last but definitely not least, that stallion out there is driving me crazy.”

“We’re better off than we were this time last year,” Albert said. “Bills are paid, stalls are full, and we got a waiting list. Our clients love us again. And best of all, Liz is happily married to a fine man with a fine daughter.”

Vic sat on a bale of hay sitting in the broad stable aisle. “You’re right. I’m just really upset about Angie’s broken collarbone. It’s not as though I could ride in her place.”

Albert’s laughter rumbled up from his broad belly. “Put me on ‘em, I’d break ’em in half.”

“Not Mr. Miracle,” Victoria said, grinning up at him. “That blockhead’s big enough even for you.”

“Liz and Mike have been gone less than a week,” Albert said. “And Angie’s been stove up two days. We got time to find us another exercise rider before the horses start getting crazy on us.”

Vic pulled herself up and leaned her head against Albert’s shoulder. “The voice of reason. I know a winter season in Florida will turn Pat into a fine junior rider, as well as blend the three of them into a real family.” She sighed. “That’s why I absolutely cannot call Liz and tell her about Angie’s accident. She’d want to come home right away to help out.”

“So call some other folks,” Albert said. “Bound to be somebody around wants to exercise a few horses, make a little extra money. Not like we need anything fancy.”

As they reached the door of the office the telephone rang. Vic picked it up off the desk, motioned to Albert to shut the door and said, “ValleyCrest.”

The voice on the other end of the line was a croak. “Vic? This is Linette. Can I speak to Albert?”

“Sure. What’s the matter with you? You sound god-awful.”

Without waiting for an answer, she handed Albert the phone. “It’s your wife.” She walked to the feed room and began organizing dinnertime for the horses. A moment later Albert stuck his head in the door.

“I got to go,” Albert said. “Linette’s come down with the flu. Making her sick to her stomach. She’s afraid to drive home. She’s dizzy and throwing up.”

“Oh, Albert, I’m sorry.”

“I hate to leave you like this. The stalls are clean, so you just got to feed and water tonight, but I may not make it in tomorrow.”

“I’ll manage. You go look after Linette. And try not to come down with the flu yourself.”

Albert shook his heavy head. “Told her when she went back to teaching fourth grade she was gonna bring home every disease known to man, but would she believe me? No.”

“Go, Albert. She doesn’t need to be giving it to the rest of the school. And stay home as long as you have to.”

Albert called over his shoulder, “Want me to see if I can get Randy or Kenny to come in and help you out tomorrow?”

Vic shook her head. “Won’t be the first time I’ve cleaned twenty-five stalls, and probably won’t be the last. Shoo. Scat. Don’t you dare get sick.”

As soon as she heard his truck rumble out of the driveway, she sat down on the tack trunk again. She prided herself on not being one of those weepy women, but right now she needed a darned good cry.

She was strong enough and capable enough to handle this place by herself for a short time, but she was facing mighty sore muscles and long hours unless Albert came in to help her tomorrow.

ValleyCrest definitely needed more help. At least one groom, but preferably two. And one person capable of riding a dozen horses a day. She’d have to put another ad in the newspaper, not that ads had ever brought her anyone halfway decent in the past. Good help who knew about horses was rare and expensive.

Suddenly the stallion began to call again. “Oh, blast,” she said. “Albert’s not here to help me bring him in. I’ll never manage it by myself.” She raised her voice and shouted, “You may have to stay in the pasture all night.” She pulled herself to her feet. “Serve him right. Why should he be comfortable? I’m not.”

“Miz Jamerson?” A voice called from in front of the stable. “Miz Jamerson, we got to see you right now.”

She ran a hand down her face. What now?

Two big men in jeans, one considerably younger than the other, stood in front of a truck outside the barn. Neither looked happy.

“Jackson here hasn’t finished the rough plumbing in the new bathroom up at the house, and I got a whole wiring crew scheduled first thing in the morning,” the older one said.

“Not my fault,” Jackson said. “I told him I’d need two days, didn’t I?” He turned to the older man and said truculently. “I told you.”

“Yeah, well, a halfway decent plumber with a crew the size of yours ought to be able to do that little bit of rough plumbing in eight hours max.”

“Who the hell—?”

“Whoa!” Vic shouted. “Knock it off, both of you.”

The two men turned to her. She took a deep breath. “Mr. Jackson, you’re scheduled to be done with the plumbing tomorrow, am I correct?”

“Yes, ma’am, just like I said.” He cut his gaze to the other man.

“And, Mr. Millhouse, your crew is coming in tomorrow?”

“Yes, ma’am, just like Mr. Whitten’s specs say.”

“Then split the difference. Mr. Jackson, get your men in here an hour early and get that rough plumbing done before noon, whatever it takes. Mr. Millhouse, bring your crew in at one in the afternoon and work until dark.”

Both men spoke at once. Vic held up her hand. “Mr. Jackson, Mr. Millhouse, I suggest you do it, because Mr. Whitten is not going to put up with shoddy workmanship, and I am not going to put up with tantrums from any more damned males today. I’ve had it up to here with testosterone. Do I make myself clear?”

Both men stared at her, then looked at each other and nodded slowly.

“May I suggest you get back to work—both of you,” Vic said. “You’ve got at least an hour of daylight left.”

The two men shared a look that damned to eternity the weirdness of females. They walked to the truck, climbed in and drove off up the hill.

After a few moments, Vic turned to go back into the barn and jumped. A man sat astride a large and very dusty motorcycle beside her truck. Vic sensed in that instant how alone she was out here without Albert or Angie or any of the horse owners.

“Where did you come from?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “I didn’t hear the motorcycle.”

“I rode up while those men in the truck were driving down. Must have covered the sound.”

“That was five minutes ago. What have you been doing since?” So he’d waited silently until she was completely alone? Disquieting.

“Waiting for you to have time to talk to me.”

The man had an accent of some sort. “Irish?” she asked.

He grinned, showing a mouthful of incredible white teeth and a couple of dimples that made her heart lurch. “I’m a Scot,” he said. “From up Oban way.”

“Do you have a name?”

He climbed off his motorcycle and walked toward her. She backed up a step.

“Name’s Jamey McLachlan, lass. And I want a job.”

CHAPTER TWO

“JOB? WHAT SORT OF JOB do you want?” Vic asked.

Jamey McLachlan took another step toward her, apparently noticed her uneasiness and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“General dogsbody,” he continued. “I can clean stalls, feed, water, exercise horses—”

“Did you say exercise horses?”

He nodded. “I can ride anything on four legs.”

“Oh, you can, can you?”

“Absolutely.” He leaned against the side of Vic’s truck, crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles. He looked supremely confident.

Vic took her time studying him. He was not more than an inch taller than she—five ten at most—and weighed perhaps ten pounds more, if that. He looked to be all muscle, but not the rippling weight-lifter kind. He was whipcord thin.

His jeans looked dusty and worn, but expensive—European, black and skintight. She dragged her eyes away from the very obvious bulge at his crotch where the fabric had worn thin and slightly gray.

His blue-black hair had been combed back. He wore it longer than Mike did—but then, this man probably couldn’t afford a barber’s shears often.

He had on a black T-shirt under a leather bomber jacket that was creased and cracked with age. And dusty paddock boots, similar to her own.

She also noted with a slight frisson of disquiet that he wore black leather gloves and a small gold stud in his right ear. His skin was dark—outdoor skin, the kind a ski instructor might have. Or a farmer. Or a drifter who rode a motorcycle without a helmet.

He watched her out of eyes as black as that damned stallion’s.

“Well, want me to strip?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Way you’re looking at me, might as well stand here in my birthday suit. Do you like what you see?”

“What I see is an overage drifter driving an expensive British motorcycle. You wouldn’t happen to have something like a passport, would you? God forbid you’d have a green card.”

“Passport I’ve got. Green card? No. I don’t 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 him—leaned against Jamey, his huge head drooped and braced against Jamey’s knee, his eyes half-closed in ecstasy as Jamey scratched behind his ears as though the horse were some kind of big puppy.

Under his breath Jamey whistled softly, some strange Celtic melody that seemed to flow from his bones and into the stallion’s. Vic felt the sound melt into her as well and shivered with it.

He raised his head, saw her, stopped his whistling and smiled into her eyes. “Shall I bring this big lad in for you, lass? Ah...boss-lass?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Vic said. “His lead line is on the gate hook. I’ll give you a hand.”

“No need. I’ve got it.”

“You’d better hook the chain over his nose. He’s a handful.”

“He’s just a big old boy. Gentle as a buffalo.” Jamey picked up the end of the shank and walked beside the stallion’s shoulder with the shank hanging loosely from his hand. The stallion behaved almost like a hound at heel.

Vic opened the gate and stood aside. She watched man and horse wander by. The stallion held his nose against the man’s shoulder.

“Come on, old son,” Jamey murmured. “Time to settle in for the night.” Vic followed at a safe distance until the stallion moved meekly into his stall and turned around to bump Jamey gently with his muzzle.

“Now be quiet,” Jamey said. “You’ll get your dinner soon enough. And the girls when you’re ready for them.”

“That’s amazing.”

“It’s a gift. I’ve always had it. Animals like me. Don’t know why. Now, shall we try that big gelding over a few fences?”

Vic nodded.

After watching him work the big jumper for forty-five minutes under lights in the newly covered arena, Vic knew she’d found her exercise rider.

Later they walked the aisle silently side by side feeding, haying and filling water buckets. Vic felt as though she’d known this man all her life.

He was handsome as Lucifer himself. She could practically smell the pheromones he exuded. He undoubtedly had scores of beautiful younger women falling all over him. To him she was no doubt only an employer, but she was aware of him, his maleness, in a way she had never been with any man. Certainly not with her deceased husband. Given Frank’s nature, his size and his irascibility, that wasn’t surprising.

There was an aura of raw sexuality about Jamey McLachlan. He was like the stallion, except that his calls were silent. Whatever he had, she had tuned into it, even though she should be too old and wise a mare to go into heat the minute an attractive stallion nickered at her.

If she wasn’t very very careful, she would wind up making a fool of herself.

HE SLID THE EMPTY HAY cart into the storage area and turned to her. “So, where’s this groom’s room? I could use a shower. Must smell like a goat.”

Actually, Vic thought, he smelled of male sweat and dust, not at all a bad scent. “Up the ladder, I’m afraid. Behind the hayloft. We haven’t used it since our last working student a couple of years ago. It’ll be pretty filthy.”

“Let’s see. Show me?”

Vic reached for the ladder to the loft and pulled herself up, all too aware of the seat of her dusty jeans rising to his eye level and above. She climbed as quickly as she could, stepping off onto the hay platform fenced off from the main floor with a barrier to keep children and pets from falling—her new nephew-in-law’s idea. She flicked the light switch on the wall, revealing neat bales of hay stacked to the ceiling.

She felt him behind her before she turned to look at him.

He hooked his thumbs into his waistband. His injured hand hung at an awkward angle.

Vic looked away quickly. “Let’s see how bad that room is.” She walked around the nearest bale to a door partly concealed in the wall. It was unlocked and opened with a squeal like an annoyed hog. Vic reached inside and turned on the light. “Oh, dear!”

He followed her inside and made a “humph” sound that seemed half annoyance and half laugh.

Vic turned to face him. “I’m so sorry. There’s no way you can stay here.”

“Don’t know why not—the mice seemed to have enjoyed it immensely.” He grinned at her.

The floor was littered with mouse droppings. Vic had expected dust and festoons of cobwebs. But somehow despite all the careful caulking, the steel wool behind the electrical outlets, the tightly cased storm window, the mice had managed to slip in. No doubt they had scattered when they heard the squeal of the door.

The floor was tiled in a nondescript gray-brown, and the sofa had been decently covered with brown tweed before it became a maternity ward for generations of field mice looking to escape from the winter’s chill. There was a student desk and chair, a green-shaded lamp, the usual end and side tables, a single bed stripped to the mattress and covered in a thick plastic protector. The mice had made short work of the plastic.

Vic raised her hands and dropped them in defeat. “This will have to be completely fumigated, repainted and the furniture replaced before you can stay here. I’m not sure a grenade and a flame thrower would help much.” She turned to him. “I should have known—it’s just that there’s so much to do that the things that aren’t critical slip into the background.”

“It’s a barn, and where there are barns, there are mice. And probably rats and snakes, as well. Comes with the territory.” He seemed remarkably cheerful.

Vic was embarrassed. What had she been thinking when she’d offered him the room without checking it first? “Let’s get out of here. I’ll call one of the local motels and book you a room for the next couple of nights until I can make this place livable.” She glanced over her shoulder as she reached for the light switch. “If that’s possible.”

“Don’t worry about a motel. I’ll bed down in the hayloft.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” He probably didn’t want to admit he hadn’t enough money for a motel. She’d have to think of something else.

She turned off the hayloft light and waited while he slung his body over the edge of the loft and started down the ladder. He used his damaged hand casually, but carefully, not relying on it to hold his weight.

She followed. Two rungs from the bottom she felt his hands encircle her waist, felt herself lifted from the ladder and set on the floor. She caught her breath at the suddenness of it.

He was looking at her, one eyebrow cocked. “I’ve slept rough a good many nights.” He looked down at his body. “It’s the shower I’ll miss. Bit too cold in February to rinse off with the wash-rack hose.”

Vic gulped at the thought of Jamey McLachlan standing naked on the wash rack.

“Oh, no. You’d catch pneumonia.” Then, before she thought the words, she spoke them, and wished a moment later she could take them back. “Look, I’ve got a perfectly good spare bedroom under the eaves, and it has its own bath—plenty of hot water. And if you don’t mind sandwiches, I could fix us both something to eat. It’s quite a way to the nearest fast-food place.”

Albert would kill her if he ever found out she’d let a totally strange man into her house. He’d be right. This guy could be Jack the Ripper. The letter from Marshall Dunn could be a fake. She opened her mouth to rescind the invitation, but he didn’t give her a chance.

“Capital idea.”

Her heart lurched. He had a crooked smile that seemed to work harder on one side of his mouth than the other. His eyes crinkled at the corners. She doubted Jack the Ripper was quite that attractive when he smiled at his victims. But then again, maybe he had been. Every bit that attractive.

Actually Jamey might be the one in danger from her if she didn’t put a cork on her underused libido.

“If you’ve got some eggs and a bit of cheese, I make a hell of an omelette.” He started for the door.

“You cook?”

“A man without a woman eats in restaurants, sponges off his friends or learns to cook.” He waited for her at the door. “And there’s an added benefit. I’ve found that a man who can cook goes a fair way to winning most women.”

“Indeed.” Well, that obviously put her in her place. No man intent on seduction would reveal his secrets. She obviously fit into an older generation marked Not Suitable for Bedding. That should have been a comforting thought. Actually she felt darned annoyed.

“Follow me,” she said in a very peremptory tone, then added perversely, “Mr. McLachlan,” as she walked to her truck.

“I’ve a better idea.” He reached for the motorcycle handlebars. “Ever ride on one of these things?”

Vic froze in her tracks and felt a cold sweat break out. She began to shake her head fiercely and found herself taking two steps back, her hands raised in front of her chest as though to ward off a blow. “N-no, thank you.” She fought to keep her voice level and hoped he had not heard her stammer.

He’d heard, all right. She could tell that from the way he cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “I’m a careful driver. I won’t turn us over.”

Her head seemed to be swinging out of her control. She felt her pulse race and that awful strangling sensation at the base of her throat. Not now, Lord, she thought. It’s just a stupid motorcycle, not a hydrogen bomb!

He reached her in two strides, grasped her upper arm with his good hand and shoved her head forward with the other. “Breathe,” he instructed. “Is there a paper bag handy?”

Beneath the pressure of his palm she shook her head. “I’m okay,” she choked. “Let me up, dammit!”

He released her head, but not her arm.

She met his eyes and hers were blazing. “How dare you!”

“Hell, woman, I know a panic attack when I see one.”

“I don’t have panic attacks.”

“Well, you just did.” He released her arm, but stood too close to her. His eyes were precisely level with hers. He grinned and stepped back. “I know because I had them for six months after this.” He raised his gloved hand. “Couldn’t even stand near the damn tractor. Not very practical on a farm.” He turned away from her, shoved his hands in his pockets and ambled back in the direction of the motorcycle. He was whistling softly under his breath.

She sucked in a single breath and willed her pulse to slow. “What did you do about it?”

“Climbed onto it at two in the morning when nobody was around to watch me and sat there shaking like a leaf until sunrise.” He shrugged. “Threw up twice. Spent all morning cutting the yearling pasture. Must have lost twenty pounds from the sweat.” He looked at her and leaned one hand on the seat of the motorcycle. “Worked for me.” He raised a hand in invitation. “It’ll work for you, too. Come on. You can’t spend your life being afraid.”

She felt the surge of fear again.

“Look at me,” he said softly. “My eyes to your eyes. Your hand in my hand.”

She took a step toward him. His eyes burned into her. He took her hand gently. She seemed to have lost the strength to draw it away. He nodded. “Up you go.”

She backed off a step.

His grip on her hand tightened. “It’s only a machine.”

“My point exactly. It doesn’t care whether it kills us or not.”

“Ah, but I do. Now get on.”

“You first.” Her brain screamed at her in disgust. Surely she couldn’t actually plan to do as he said, could she?

He swung his leg over the seat without letting go of her hand. “Now you. You promised.”

She was astride the pillion and he was pulling her hands around his waist before she said indignantly, “I did no such thing.”

“Your eyes did. Now put your feet behind mine and hang on tight.”

She closed her eyes, gripped his waist and leaned her head so that her cheek lay against his shoulder blade. She smelled the leather of his jacket and felt the crazy quilt of cracks against her face.

The engine sounded like a 747 coming in for a landing.

They were off up the gravel drive.

She barely had time to register the feel of taut ridges of muscle that ran along his rib cage before he stopped the bike.

She only realized she’d had her eyes closed when she opened them. They were right in front of her cottage.

“This is your house, I presume?”

She gurgled something affirmative. Her stomach churned. Please, God, don’t let me throw up on him.

“Told you I wouldn’t kill us,” he said.

Her fingers seemed locked together in some sort of muscle spasm. He whispered over his shoulder. “You can let go now if you like.”

“Oh, God,” she breathed, and released him.

“It’s pleasant to have you plastered against my back, but it might make walking difficult.” He swung his leg forward over the handlebars, twisted and slipped his hands under her elbows. “Dismount the way you’d get off a horse.”

Obediently she swung off. He held her for a moment at arm’s length. “There, that’s one down. I’ve an idea we’ve a few more to go.”

“A few what?”

“Barriers.”

CHAPTER THREE

A TUBBY BASSET HOUND and a Labrador retriever with a gray muzzle met Vic at her front door with evident delight. Jamey hunkered down instantly and fondled them both. “Aren’t you the lovely boys, then?” he said. The dogs nearly wagged their bodies in two.

Vic stepped around dogs and man and walked into the living room. She was still shaking from the ride on Jamey’s motorcycle. She’d been scared, but elated, too.

“My niece, Liz, took the two Jack Russell terriers with her to Florida,” she said, “and a friend is keeping her parrot. He’s not fond of me.”

“Can’t imagine any creature not being fond of you.”

“Unfortunately my cat views the parrot as an entrée.”

“Cat? Where?”

“You probably won’t see him. He used to be a barn cat until he got an ear torn off in a fight. Now he’s a house cat, but he’s peculiar. Hides from strangers.”

“Does he really?”

Vic turned and saw Jamey—still squatting on the floor—with a large one-eared gray tabby climbing up his shirtfront to butt him in the chin.

“Oh.”

“Have names, do they?”

“The basset is Max, the Labrador is Sam and the cat is Stripes. We don’t go in for fancy names much around here.”

“We don’t at home, either.” He stood with the cat in his arms. Vic heard the purr from across the room. Surely a man so good with animals couldn’t be Jack the Ripper, could he?

“Going to call Marshall Dunn now? Check on me?”

His ability to read her mind was disconcerting. “It’s almost four in the morning in England, isn’t it? Marshall would kill me if I woke him now.”

“He probably would. But he’ll be up by six to watch the lads ride his Thoroughbreds across the Downs. You can call him before you go to bed.” He grinned over the cat’s head. “And push a chair under your door if you’re nervous.”

Vic felt her face flush. She’d been thinking of doing precisely that. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Come on upstairs. I’ll show you your room.”

“Let me bring in my kit from the bike first.”

“Sure. I’m amazed you can carry a saddle on a motorcycle.”

“Easy. Set the roll bar up in back and strap the saddle to it. I can carry as much in the side holders as you can in the trunk of your average car.”

She watched him open the various holders, extract a pair of duffel bags and bring them in.

“Now I’m ready for that shower,” he said. “Then I’ll make you an omelette fit for a queen.”

“I’m a perfectly adequate cook, thank you.”

“You may be the world’s greatest chef, but I owe you for the job and the bed. Sit. I’ll find my way. You put your feet up.”

Instead of following his advice, she went to the refrigerator, checked to see that she had plenty of eggs and “a bit of cheese,” as well as English muffins. She poured herself a glass of white zinfandel, set another glass on the counter for Jamey and headed for her bedroom.

She’d moved her enormous old bedroom furniture down from the big house. Other than unpacking enough of her clothes to work in, she’d done precious little else. There was not a picture on the wall nor a knickknack on a table. Cardboard boxes sat stacked in every corner. The bed was made up with sheets, pillowcases and quilts, but she hadn’t bothered to put on the dust ruffle. There didn’t seem to be time these days for more than eating, sleeping and working horses.

She sat down on the bed, pulled off her paddock boots and her heavy socks, wiggled her toes, sipped her wine and lay back on the bed for just a moment.

“YOUR DINNER’S READY, lass,” a soft voice said.

Her eyes popped open and she sat up so quickly her head spun.

Jamey McLachlan stood in the doorway—no, lounged in the doorway. His skin glistened and his wet hair shone like an otter’s pelt. He wore fresh jeans and a bright red crewneck sweater with the sleeves pushed up his muscular forearms and only the one glove on his bad hand. He was barefoot.

Suddenly she felt very grubby. “Uh, give me a minute. I must have fallen asleep.”

“I hated to wake you. You looked so peaceful.”

She swung off the bed, pointedly shut the bedroom door in his face and walked into her bathroom. Yuck. She had probably slept with her mouth open and snored like a walrus. She repaired as much damage as she could and joined Jamey in the kitchen.

“You’re as good as your word,” she said half an hour later over the remains of omelette and green salad. “That was delicious. I didn’t realize I had any lettuce that wasn’t growing penicillin.”

He picked up the plates and took them to the sink.

“Nope,” she said. “I’ll clean up. You must be worn-out from riding a motorcycle all day.”

“I’d say it’s a toss-up which one of us is more tired. And remember, boss-lass, you said you intend to work me hard.”

“So I will, but you’re not on kitchen patrol. Go to bed. That’s an order.”

He saluted smartly. “Aye, aye, Captain.” At the kitchen door he paused. “Thanks for taking me in. I promise you Marshall will vouch for me.”

“No doubt.”

She waited until she heard his door close, stuffed the dishes and utensils in the dishwasher, turned it on and went to her bedroom. Marshall would be up by now. She laid her hand on the telephone.

Then she withdrew it. So long as Jamey McLachlan slept under her roof, she’d rather think he was everything he seemed. If Marshall had reservations, what would she do? She couldn’t kick him out in the middle of the night.

Still, better to have him upstairs where she’d hear him if he went out than have him at the stable. He didn’t look like a drug user, but there were plenty of drugs in the locked medicine cabinet that the average druggie would thoroughly enjoy. And there was plenty of tack worth stealing. No. She’d check him out in the morning. “Stripes?” she whispered. “Ready for bed?”

The cat did not respond. So he was hiding, after all. Just a fluke that he’d come to curl around Jamey. Somehow that made Vic feel a little better.

She propped her slipper chair under the door handle before she got ready for bed. Just in case. As she lay awake, she could hear Jamey moving about over her head.

She was used to unexpected company. Riders from other parts of the country who came to town for horse shows often wound up sleeping in her bedrooms, on her Hide-ABed, even in sleeping bags on the floor. Some of them she knew well, and some she knew hardly at all. They, like Jamey, were friends of friends. Sometimes the only recommendation they brought was verbal.

Male or female, it never seemed to matter when there were four or five or more.

This was different. She was much too aware of Jamey McLachlan—a lone male sleeping upstairs. Nude.

Now where had that come from?

Okay, so he looked like the sort of man who slept naked. She’d never find out. Unfortunately she could imagine. She rolled over and dragged the pillow over her head. Just when she’d thought her hormones were under control, they started going berserk. Jamey McLachlan wasn’t the only one going middle-aged crazy.

VIC CAME INSTANTLY AWAKE as she always did in the morning. The clock read six-thirty. She sighed. Time to rise and shine. Horses to feed and water, stalls to clean, horses to put out in paddocks and bring in again, the endless grooming and exercising to get through, then a couple of lessons if the weather warmed up enough. Kids arriving after school. Clients checking on their horses. Then more feeding and haying and watering.

Occasionally Vic wondered what kind of life normal people had.

She sat on the edge of the bed, checked her address book and put in a call to Marshall Dunn. If he was going to be in his office, now would be the time to catch him.

“Dunn here,” came the gruff voice.

“Marshall? It’s Victoria Jamerson from America.”

“Ha! So Jamey chose you, did he?”

“What do you mean, chose me?”

“He called me last week from Kentucky, asked me to express him some referral letters. Wanted to stay in the south for the winter. I gave him Charlie Wright in Ocala, Meg Harwood in Southern Pines, Ted Russelwhite in Phoenix and you. Frankly I thought he’d pick Florida.”

“Essentially the same letter?” Vic asked.

“Mm. Essentially.”

“Why me? I’m hardly a high-profile operation.”

“Don’t remember, really. Maybe he mentioned he wanted to see Graceland or the Mississippi River or something. He seemed very pleased when I mentioned your name.”

“Did he now? Can you really vouch for him?”

“As to his honesty, absolutely. Knew his stepfather for donkey’s years. Jamey idolized Jock. Had a run of bad luck the last few years, what with his hand and losing his wife and brother that way. Not surprising he’d want to get away for a while, especially given his heritage.”

Vic had been caught short by the mention of the death of Jamey’s wife and brother and had planned to ask Marshall for particulars. That is, until his last words caught her attention. “What do you mean, given his heritage?”

“Suppose they do prefer the open road, really. In the genes or something. Surprising he stuck it out in Oban this long. With his parents gone, there’s nothing to hold him in one place any longer.”

“Marshall, I do not know what you’re talking about, and I am growing increasingly exasperated.”

“Ah. Well, of course, you can tell by looking at him, can’t you? The earring, I mean. Dead giveaway. Amazing man with horses, though, and as I say, always been as honest as the day is long with me. Excellent reputation that way.”

“Marshall, what are you talking about?”

“Well, of course, Vic, everyone knows he’s a Rom.”

“What the hell is a Rom?”

“Vic, old thing, the man is a full-blooded Gypsy.”

“So?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Vic—I like Jamey enormously. Glad to write his letters for him. Turned a couple of my hard-case Thoroughbreds into winners. But let’s face it, old dear, whatever veneer Jock McLachlan gave him when he gave the boy his name, he’ll never be a gentleman.”

Vic was too stunned to speak. And then too angry. Finally she simply shook her head at the telephone. “Marshall, your attitudes belong in the twelfth century.”

Marshall rumbled his great laugh. “Possibly. Still, they do me well enough. As for Jamey, enjoy him while you’ve got him. No doubt he’ll be moving along in a month or so. Now, I hear you have a new nephew-in-law and a grandniece. Tell me about them.”

After several more minutes Vic hung up the phone, sat back against the pillows and decided she would do precisely what Marshall had suggested. If a moss-backed bigot like Marshall Dunn considered Jamey McLachlan honest and competent, who was she to question?

Twenty minutes later, dressed and ready to meet the day, she moved the slipper chair from under her doorknob and went to the kitchen to start the coffee. Apparently Mr. McLachlan liked to sleep in. She started up the steps to call him and was met by Stripes coming out of the open door of his room. The cat stalked downstairs, tail erect.

“You spent the night with him, you fickle thing?” Vic said. Then she noticed the dogs were gone. She glanced out the front door and across the porch.

The motorcycle was missing, as well. How could she not have heard him leave? Was he gone already? Along with the silver, perhaps? Or the drugs? She paused at the kitchen door and saw a piece of paper from the memo pad beside the telephone propped against an empty mug. She walked over and picked it up. In an obviously European hand, it read, “Coffee is fresh. See you at the yard. J.”

“The yard?” Oh, yes. The British word for stable.

And that was where her truck had spent the night—in front of the barn. She’d have to walk down.

She grabbed a piece of cheese from the refrigerator and stuck it and an apple in the pocket of her heavy down jacket. She pulled on a knit cap and work gloves, poured herself a mug of coffee, turned off the coffeemaker and, cradling the steaming mug, stepped out into the morning.

The dawn barely tinted the eastern edges of the horizon. The wind was picking up. A blustery February day, then. The horses would all spook at the slightest distraction.

She wore silk long johns under her jeans and a fisherman’s sweater, but the breeze still nipped. “Yesterday, fifty degrees. Today, it’s thirty. Tomorrow, who knows?” she said to the open sky. “Make up Your mind, why don’t You?”

The dogs met her at the door of the barn. Her truck stood where she’d left it, alongside Angie’s car. The motorcycle stood beside it. When had the man gotten out of bed? And why hadn’t she heard him leave? He must move like a ghost.

And a ghost he was. She walked the stalls. Horses watered, fed and hayed. The muck cart already set out beside the last stall ready to be picked and fluffed. The aisle swept of stray hay.

And all peaceful. Quiet.

Quiet? It shouldn’t be quiet, not with Mr. Miracle waking up with the roosters. She trotted down to the stallion’s stall.

Empty. His gate was open. She ran to the door and looked toward the paddock. The stallion grazed at the far end, quiet as a gelding. He seemed to have turned from a terrorist into a wuss overnight.

But where was that damned man?

“Morning, boss-lass,” he said from somewhere behind and above her. She nearly dropped her coffee.

He hung from his good left hand with his feet four rungs from the bottom of the hayloft ladder. He let himself drop and thrust his hands into his pockets as he sauntered over to her with that muck-kicking grin on his face. “I thought I’d start by sweeping up the mouse manure and work up to the horse manure after the morning got a trifle warmer,” he said.

“You are seriously sticking it to me, aren’t you?” Vic answered. She finished her coffee and set the empty mug on the wash-rack shelf.

His grin widened. “See, I figure if I impress you today, I can get away with slacking off from here on in.”

That was when she noticed what he was wearing. A down vest over a skintight black turtleneck sweater, tucked into equally tight beige riding britches and well-worn black riding boots that already had a coating of dust over what had obviously been a spit shine. It was like an anatomy lesson. Every lean muscle defined. And very, very male. She gulped. “Uh, we don’t usually dress up around here except for shows.”

“Ah. This is my usual uniform at home. It’s as comfortable for me as jeans for you, probably. Besides, I get a better grip on my horses in boots. Does it bother you?”

Yes, as a matter of fact it bothered her quite a lot, but not in the way he meant. “N-no, of course not.” She looked away. “Whatever turns you on.”

“Then let’s get to it. How about I alternate exercising horses and cleaning stalls? If we each ride our share, we can be done by lunchtime, and then I can spend the afternoon cleaning out that pigsty upstairs.”

Vic stared at him. He didn’t know? Surely Marshall Dunn had warned him. But perhaps it was such old news that Marshall had not thought it necessary to say anything. Oh, nuts. “I don’t ride,” she said flatly.

“Come on, life’s too short for games.”

“I do not ride.”

“I remember your name from years back. You were on the U.S. equestrian team for a while, weren’t you? You’re just what that big old boy needs to teach him his business.”

“Mr. McLachlan, watch my lips. I have not put a foot in a stirrup in over twenty years. I do not, I can not ride a horse.”

Without warning, the shaking began at her fingertips. She clasped her arms tightly across her chest and felt her racing heart beating in her neck. The pain in her chest was like a vise. She clamped her teeth against the rising nausea and fought to keep them from chattering.

It hadn’t been this sudden or this bad in years. She’d thought she was over the worst of it—the panic, the shattering fear, the sudden desire to run and keep running until she was curled up in her own bed.

She fought to breathe. Last night dealing with the motorcycle had been a piece of cake compared to this.

And dammit, he knew!

“Oh, lass,” he said, and his voice was full of such sorrow and pity that she wanted to scream at him, except that her teeth remained clenched so hard she felt tears well in her eyes.

In an instant he wrapped her in his arms. She wanted to fight him off, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could only stand there toe-to-toe and vibrate with the force of her heartbeat.

“Breathe. Take a long breath through your nose,” he said. “Do it!” His voice was harsh. She could feel every muscle of his arms tight around her, his thighs against hers, his body fitted against her. She began to struggle, but he held on. “Let it go,” he whispered. “Let it go.”

She drew a single breath that shuddered throughout her frame. It was as though that breath had hit her body’s off switch. She saw waves of red behind her eyelids...

“WHAT THE HELL am I doing down here?” she said. She felt the rough hay beneath her body and realized she was staring up at the roof of the barn—and into the concerned eyes of Jamey McLachlan. “Oh, drat!” she said, then put her hands against the bale of hay beneath her and struggled to sit up.

His hand on her midriff held her down. “Sit up now and you’ll probably pass out again.”

“Pass out? Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve never passed out in my life.”

He smiled. “Tell me another. I promise I didn’t deck you.”

“Let me up!”

“Answer a question first. Did you have any breakfast before you came trotting down here this morning?”

Vic thought of the cheese and apple in her pocket. “No, actually. Of course, that’s it. Low blood sugar. Too much caffeine, not enough protein.”

“If you like.” He stood and she realized he’d been kneeling beside her.

“How’d I get here?” She closed her eyes, “Oh, Lord, you actually carried me? Probably herniated a bunch of disks in the process. Don’t bother asking for workman’s comp.”

“Stop it.” His voice sounded harsh. “I could carry you one-handed.” His grin came back as he held out his gloved right hand. “As a matter of fact, it took one and a half, which is all I have available at the moment.”

She sat up slowly and carefully. For a moment her head spun, then it stabilized. Her heart rate had returned to something close to normal. Thank God the attack passed quickly this time. “I’m terribly embarrassed. I should know better than to skip breakfast.”

He turned away. “Come off it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Low blood sugar my ass. I’ll go up to the house and bring you something to eat, and then you’re going to tell me what in hell has kept one of the finest riders I ever saw out of the saddle for twenty years.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“BLOODY HELL!”

Jamey trotted up the hill toward Vic’s cottage with both dogs trundling along behind him. The last thing he needed was a woman who had full-blown panic attacks, no matter how much he enjoyed her company.

Liz Whitten wouldn’t be back with her new husband and child for two whole months.

Unless one of ValleyCrest’s boarders was an extraordinary rider—doubtful, judging from the rest of the horses he’d seen at ValleyCrest—Vic Jamerson was the only one who had experience on a horse like Roman. All right, so it had been a few years.

The woman had ridden with the U.S. equestrian team, for pity’s sake. The caliber of talent international competition required didn’t vanish with age.

He’d never find another rider with her sort of experience within a radius of five hundred miles. Even if he did, no way could he insinuate a stranger onto the stallion’s back.

Jamey was nearly convinced that Mr. Miracle was Roman. He couldn’t be entirely sure until he’d seen the horse put through his paces by another rider—a good one. He had to be able to assess the horse’s movements, temperament, and flair.

No doubt Whitten had gotten papers on the horse’s breeding from the farmer in Germany who had sold him. The papers were forged of course, but that might be difficult to prove. Jamey might never be able to trace every step the colt had taken from the moment he’d disappeared from Oban until he’d wound up on a nameless breeding farm in Wurtheim, Germany.

How could Jamey explain to Whitten or even to Vic that he’d spent the past two years searching the world for Roman? Or that he’d arrived in Belgium to check out a friend’s tip about a horse that might be his Roman only a day after Whitten had loaded the horse on an air transport for quarantine in Kentucky? What evidence did he have that would stand up against papers and a bill of sale? How could he tell anybody that Mr. Miracle was in reality Jock McLachlan’s foundation stallion?

Better to keep his mouth shut. At least until he was a hundred percent certain of his facts.

Vic said she couldn’t ride? The hell she couldn’t!

“Nonsense!” he said aloud. “I need her, dammit, and I need her in the saddle.” He slammed through the house, dug through her refrigerator until he found a diet soda and half a pound or so of ham. He took bread from the bread-box, spread it with butter, slid in several pieces of ham and wrapped the whole thing in a paper towel. As he started out the door, he remembered that Americans liked mayonnaise and mustard on their sandwiches, not butter. Well, at seven-thirty in the morning, butter would have to do.

As he walked down the hill, a picture of Vic flying across the pastures on Roman came unbidden into his mind. What he’d give to see that. She’d be beautiful with the wind in her hair, that wide mouth of hers laughing...

Damnation. He needed to keep his mind on business.

Until he’d probed the people at the quarantine station in Kentucky for information, the only thing Jamey knew about ValleyCrest Stables was that the stallion had been sent there, ostensibly for training.

Once Jamey discovered the horse’s final destination, he’d actually had to call three acquaintances in Europe before he found one who knew the owner of ValleyCrest. Vic Jamerson. The name was vaguely familiar, but it took some time to make the connection to Victoria Jamerson. Plenty of riders had come and gone in the intervening years, and her career had been mysteriously short.

He’d had to do some fast toe-tapping to conceal the fact that his only interest was in that single stable—not the others he’d requested letters to.

Thank God Marshall Dunn was the least curious man he’d ever met and not overly swift when it came to anything other than racehorses.

Jamie smiled to himself and shook his head at the memory of the way he had manipulated Marshall.

He was well aware that Marshall considered him “not quite out of the top drawer, don’tcha know?” Good enough to train his problem racehorses, but not good enough to invite to Dunn House for a weekend party.

That should have made Jamey feel a bit better about pulling the wool over the man’s eyes. Marshall was, after all, the stereotypical gaja, the sort of man who, in an earlier century, might have driven Jamey’s family from their lands and watched them starve. Guilt had gnawed Jamey nonetheless.

Then he’d spent an entire evening last week winkling information from one of the lady quarantine attendants in Kentucky. At the time he’d thought he was having another run of dreadful luck. The stallion had been gone only a few days.

“Took the haulers over an hour to load him,” the woman said over her third whiskey sour. “They didn’t dare tranquilize him for fear he’d fall down in the truck and they’d never get him up.” The woman shook her head. “To tell you the truth, we were glad to get rid of him. He’s been a problem child since the day he danced off the airplane from Belgium. It took three of us to handle him, and only then with a chain across his gums.”

“Dangerous?”

The woman had laughed. “Not mean, but definitely dangerous. Anything that big is dangerous.”

Somehow he’d have to convince Victoria Jamerson to ride again. But how long would it take to get her fit enough to deal with a horse like Roman?

She was still in good physical shape. Fantastic shape, actually. Disquieting shape.

He remembered her slim waist when he’d plucked her off that ladder and set her down beside him, then the feel of her breasts pressed against his back on the short motorcycle ride up the hill last evening, the strength of her arms around his waist that held him so tightly he could barely breathe. Nice memory.

Nice woman, dammit, a woman he’d very much enjoy taking to bed. He stared at his reflection in the window of her truck and realized he’d started dreaming of taking her to bed ten minutes after he’d met her.

He could not let himself get involved emotionally. Not with someone he might have to rob. He took a deep breath and dragged his mind back to finding ways of getting Vic Jamerson to ride Roman for him.

Even if her physical shape was superb, her psychological shape was a different matter. Panic attacks like the one on the motorcycle? He’d have to find a way to work her through them. And quickly. Surely he’d be helping her. He refused to consider that he might damage her further.

He found her in the office at the desk. She sat with her head in her hands. She seemed smaller. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her.

She heard him open the door, started guiltily and busied herself with something on the pad in front of her.

“Here,” he said, and handed her the sandwich and soda.

She took both, unwrapped the sandwich and began to eat without taking her eyes off him.

“Now talk.” He sat in the straight chair on the other side of the desk.

“Eat now, talk later,” she said..

“I’m not letting go of this.”

“Fine. In the meantime, go exercise a horse or muck a stall or something.” She turned her back on him and took a swig of soda.

“Fine.” He walked out and shut the door behind him. He checked the white board outside the wash rack for the list of horses to be exercised, went to the farthest stall, pulled out a big gray mare, rubbed her down, tacked her up, swung into the saddle and walked her to the arena. If Vic made him groom and tack his own horses, as well as exercise them, this would take all day.

“So let her muck the stalls,” he said to the mare.

As if in answer, the mare wickered softly. Instantly the stallion’s head went up; he turned and cantered straight at the paddock fence.

“Not now, old son,” Jamey said gently. He began to whistle softly. The stallion slid to a stop a foot from the fence, snorted, pranced around a bit and walked off with his tail in the air. The mare, not cycling sexually this early in February, could not have cared less.

“If you’d gotten to her, she’d have kicked your bloody head in,” Jamey said in passing. The stallion ignored him and fixed his eye on the mare.

She did enough ignoring for them both.

“Women,” Jamey said as he took the mare to a trot. “Make you hanker after them, then kick you in the crotch when you come close. Remember that, old son, and protect yourself in the clinches.”

IN THE OFFICE Vic took an additional two bites of her sandwich, then divided the rest between the two dogs. She wasn’t certain she could keep down what she’d already eaten.

How long had it been since she’d panicked that way? Years. Last night she’d managed to head off a full-blown attack when Jamey had demanded she ride behind him on his motorcycle. She’d been so damned proud of herself, elated that she had done it. Even enjoyed it—well, enjoyed having her arms around an attractive man. Her psyche had set her up obviously, and then ambushed her all over again.

She was so used to the whole world knowing and accepting her inability to get on a horse. Nobody questioned her any longer, and now that Frank was dead, nobody ever laughed at her or called her a coward for it, either.

Well, now that Mr. Jamey McLachlan knew what happened when she was pushed, he’d have better sense in future. He could whistle his way back to Oban before she’d discuss it with him any further. She decided to ignore the incident and muck stalls. As she pulled the door to the office closed behind her, the telephone rang. She rolled her eyes, but went back to answer it.

“Vic?”

“Good grief, Albert, you sound worse than Linette did yesterday.”

“The woman’s given me the flu. She’s piled up in the bed and I’m piled up on the couch.”

“Oh, Albert! You need me to come see about you?”

“No! You stay as far away from us as you can and you start taking some zinc right this minute. Maybe you won’t get it.”

“Obviously you’re not coming in today,” Vic said.

Albert groaned in reply.

“Have you called the doctor?”

“Doctor says it’s a virus. It takes three or four days. I got fever, Vic. Grown men don’t get fever.”

“You sound like Linette did it on purpose.” Vic laughed. “Look after yourself and don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll call Kenny and get him to come by after school to help out,” Albert said.

Vic caught her breath. “That won’t be necessary. I, uh...I’m managing just fine.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

His reply was a fit of coughing and a strangled “Bye.” She felt guilty to think of Albert’s flu as a stroke of luck, but now she wouldn’t have to explain Jamey McLachlan to him for at least another couple of days. By then she’d have better evidence that the man was not a serial killer. She knew darn well Albert’s nephew Kenny would go snitch about Jamey to Albert if she let the boy within a hundred yards of ValleyCrest. And Albert would coming racing over, fever or no, to check the man out.

This time she made it to the center hall before the telephone rang again. “Botheration!” she said, and picked up the portable from the wash rack.

“Miz Jamerson?”

She sighed. “Yes, Mr. Wilcox. What is it now?”

“Can you come up to the house? I need a decision on where to place these electrical outlets in the bathrooms.”

“How should I know? Put ’em where you think they should go.”

“Not my place to do that. I can’t go on until you come see.”

She’d been watching Jamey exercise the gray mare in the ring as she talked. The mare usually hated work, but today she seemed relaxed and almost enjoying herself. He definitely did have a way with horses. She noticed, however, that his gloved right hand grasped the right rein loosely, and that his left compensated in a complicated crossover hold. Workmanlike, but hardly delicate.

But he rode with a fluid grace that seemed to make him part of the horse. The mare responded to the slightest tilt of his slim hips.

The man was too damned attractive for his own good. She could think of half a dozen wealthy women who would be willing to set him up in business just for the sake of his companionship after hours.

Good thing she didn’t have enough money to tempt him.

“I’ve got to go up to the house to deal with the contractor,” she called to him. He glanced over, nodded and continued to work the mare.

“Gee,” she whispered. “Sure is nice to be missed.”

HALF AN HOUR LATER the mare relaxed in the paddock farthest from the stallion, and Jamey sat atop a tall, lopeared Thoroughbred gelding that reminded him of that cartoon buzzard—sort of a good-natured klutz.

As he lolloped around the end of the ring, he saw a figure emerge from the stable. For a moment he thought it was Vic, then realized this woman had short curly hair and carried her right arm in a sling. He pulled his horse down to a walk.

She was staring at him with her mouth open. “And whose little boy are you?” she asked.

“Name’s Jamey McLachlan,” he said, and stopped. “You’d be the exercise rider with the broken wing.”

“Angie Womack, yeah. Trust Fund’s momma.”

“Fine animal. Opinionated.”

Angie giggled. “You might say. Where’s Vic?”

“Dealing with a contractor.” He swung off the horse.

“Don’t let me stop you. Where on earth did you materialize from?”

“I’m a fortuitous Scottish saddle burn come to rescue the damsel in distress.”

“And just my size,” Angie said. “My, my, if I weren’t married... Oh, well.”

She followed Jamey to the wash rack and leaned against the wall while he took the tack off the horse. Then she picked up a brush and began to groom the other side.

“Your marriage, my loss,” Jamey said with a gallant bow.

“Ooh.” Angie rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you the sweet-talking liar, though?”

Within two minutes she’d managed to ferret out every bit of information he was at liberty to tell her about his cover story.

“So you’re responsible for the blessed peace and quiet from Mr. Miracle?” Angie asked. “And you’re going to exercise and groom the horses, muck the stalls, clean up that hellhole upstairs, plus feed and water? You have a couple of clones hiding in the office?”

“There’s just one of me. But I work fast.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Angie whispered. For a moment her eyes went flat, but by the time he looked up she was smiling again. “Ready to ride another horse?”

“Ready for a change of pace. Come and talk to me while I muck out a stall or two.”

“I’d offer to help, but with this stupid thing...” Angie waggled her sling at him.

He set to work, balancing the manure pick with his weak right hand and using the strength of his left to lift. Angie watched him, unaware that each time he hefted the fork a twinge of pain shot from his fingers to his elbow. “How well do you know Vic?” he asked.

“Very well and for a long time. I grew up with her niece, Liz, the one who’s just gotten married and run away to Florida for two months. Why?”

“Why doesn’t she ride?”

“Not doesn’t. Can’t.”

He set the fork down. “Listen, I saw the woman ride once a donkey’s years ago when I was still in school. Now I mention riding and she flies apart at the seams.”

Angie looked at him a moment without speaking. “Nearly everybody on this side of the Atlantic and a good many people on the other side know the story. It’s yesterday’s news. Nobody mentions it—they just take it for granted.”

“So? How’d she lose her nerve? That’s what it is, am I right?”

“A little more than that.” She perched on a tack trunk and swung her feet. “You probably saw her not long before her accident.”

“Accident?”

“Yeah. She was riding a Grand Prix jumper at Madison Square Garden—the one with the lousy practice area—and some fool going the wrong way crashed into her over a jump. The horses escaped with a few bruises and scrapes, but the other rider was killed instantly, and Vic nearly cashed it in, as well. She had a concussion, cracked skull, broken pelvis and a bunch of other broken bones—I don’t remember all the details. Anyway, she was in a coma for a while, then in traction and casts and therapy and God knows what all for almost a year, during which time the other guy’s family sued the Garden, Frank Jamerson, who was her husband and her trainer, the city of New York, the American Horse Shows Association and probably God Himself, for all I know.”

“What happened?”

“In the end she won, but it cost a fortune in legal fees before the thing was settled, and cost her a good deal more in anguish. Then when she finally did get home, the first day she came down here she went totally berserk. Took months before she could touch a horse and months more before she started working with them. She didn’t drive a car for years, and I don’t think she’s driven the tractor or flown on an airplane since.”

“There are therapies and medication to control panic attacks.”

“Oh, she tried ‘em. They helped some, but the doctors said she didn’t have a real phobia—what she had was ‘remembered trauma.’ Maybe if she’d been able to climb back on that horse five minutes after she crashed, she’d have been all right. When I fell, I got back on the horse and walked around the arena while I waited for the ambulance. I was in agony, but I was more scared that if I walked away, I’d be like Vic—and I couldn’t bear not to ride again.”

“And she’s all right with it?”

“As all right as you can be when the thing you’ve lived your life for is suddenly taken away from you.”

Jamey nodded. “Maybe it’s time she got it back.”

Angie’s eyes widened. “Don’t even try! I mean, she’ll pass out or have a stroke or something. Let the poor woman be.”

He smiled. “Of course. Not my place.”

“It certainly is not. She’s perfectly content the way she is.” Angie took a breath. “She’s the toughest, most organized person I know. There’s not a need she doesn’t meet. I mean, here she is running this barn single-handed, overseeing the house renovation, teaching lessons, medicating the horses and being everybody’s mother confessor. She’s amazing.” Angie turned her head and a broad grin spread over her face. “And heeeere’s Victoria.”

Vic strode down the aisle toward them. “Those contractors are going to drive me into an early grave. Hi, Ange. How’s the collarbone?”

Jamey leaned against the stall door and remembered Angie’s words There’s not a need she doesn’t meet. Maybe it was about time somebody starting meeting a few of hers. And that somebody was going to be Jamey McLachlan.

ANGIE ELBOWED VIC into her desk chair and plunked herself down across from her. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, I agree he’s gorgeous, but you can’t take strangers in off the street and put them to work.”

“You were perfectly charming out there. I assumed you two had made friends.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Angie asked. “I am a Southern gal. I’d be polite to General Sherman until he turned his back on me. Who is this guy, anyway? Where’d he come from?”

“An old friend of mine from England, Marshall Dunn, sent him to me.” Vic bristled. “He rides like an angel—and not a fallen one, unlike somebody I could mention.”

Angie blushed. “Okay, you don’t have to rub it in. But if you’d give me a couple of days, I could find you somebody to take my place.”

“Not necessary. Give me some credit, Angela Womack. I checked him out. He’s temporary help. Period.”

“Watch him is all I say. He seems very nice, but then so do most con men.”

“What would he be conning me out of? My feed bills? My manure pile?” She stood and pulled Angie to her feet by her good arm. “Go home and get better. Don’t worry about me. I can look after myself.”

After Angie drove away, still grumbling, Vic began to relax. Neither she nor Jamey brought up the subject of her riding, and they fell into an easy rhythm. Vic groomed and tacked so that each time Jamey finished exercising one horse, the next would be waiting on the wash rack for him.

While he rode, Vic took horses to paddocks and brought them in, and mucked at a stall or two. At noon Angie returned with burgers for everyone, but left again soon after lunch. Jamey had an idea that she wanted to speak to Vic privately, but didn’t see how to bow out during lunch without seeming discourteous.

At about four o’clock clients began to show up to ride their horses. Vic introduced Jamey, taught three private lessons while he finished mucking out stalls, fed and watered.

He had left the stallion outside all day and made no attempt to bring him in until nightfall about six, when the last of the clients had left.

He waited until Vic was in the office, then cross-tied the stallion on the wash rack and began to groom him, all the while whistling softly. He fitted a bridle on him, slid on his saddle and cinched the girth. The horse wriggled and stamped, but accepted the tack with no overt signs of fear. Obviously it wasn’t the first time he’d worn a saddle. Jamey flipped the stirrups up over the horse’s back and cinched them together with a short length of line so they wouldn’t bang against the horse’s sides, then he fitted a lunging cavesson over the bridle.

“What on earth are you doing?” Vic asked from the office door.

“Getting ready to exercise this brute.”

“You’ll 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 rattletrap of a truck.

She wanted him to come back with or without the truck. Last night, chatting over that omelette, she’d realized how lonely she’d been and for how long.

Not that she wasn’t surrounded by people. But she felt as though it had been years since she’d talked, really talked, to an attractive man. A man who seemed to care about what she said.

She put a touch of eye shadow on her lids and pulled out her lipstick. She was acting like a young woman on a date. She smiled at her foolishness, doubting that Jamey saw her that way.

By the time the truck rolled in, she had set the kitchen table and poured them each a glass of red wine. The dogs lay on the shabby couch in the living room. The cat lay on top of them.

“Pizza man!” he called from the door. All three animals raced to greet him.

“No pizza for them,” she said. “They throw it up, and besides, I’m starving.”

He set the box on the table, opened it and reached for his wine. “To our first day together. And to many more.”

She felt herself blushing as they touched glasses.

“So, do I suit, lass?”

“Until something better comes along. No, seriously, you’re a godsend and you know it. We need to talk about a decent salary. I was thinking a full groom’s wages plus what I planned to pay Angie Womack to exercise. Plus the free room, of course, if we ever make it habitable.”

He suddenly seemed uncomfortable. “You’re a generous woman.”

“You’re doing the work of at least two people, so you should receive the pay. Heck, I’d pay you just to keep Blockhead from yowling his head off all day.”

“Why do you call him Blockhead? He’s got a lovely head.”

“It’s his temperament. At least it was until you got hold of him. My new nephew-in-law, Mike Whitten, had never been around horses or the horse-show business before he met Liz, and he’s sort of ga-ga. And he adores her. He found out quite by accident that the big annual European Sport Horse Sale was taking place so off he went.”

Jamey sat back, laughed gently and shook his head. “And bought the biggest blackest stallion he could. They must have seen him coming. The horse isn’t branded. I’d say he’s what—three, four years old?”

“That’s the thing. Mike refuses to tell even Liz how much he paid, but I suspect it was a bundle. And the horse has no papers—none.”

Jamey sat upright. No papers? That was a bonus. He wouldn’t have to prove forgery.

“Some German farmer brought him to the show, auctioned him and disappeared the moment he signed the bill of sale,” Vic continued. “Without proof of ancestry, Mike can’t even enter him into the American Stallion Provings so that he can be approved as a breeding stallion after he’s trained.”

“It’s high time other countries began to develop their own sport-horse breeds. The Irish do a fair job, but none of their horses are consistent enough to compete with the Europeans. The French are fairly successful, but a new breed registry requires a prepotent foundation stallion that’ll sire a line of horses as fine as he is—” Jamey stopped speaking abruptly and looked at her.

“Well, go on. I agree with you. How do you propose to do that in one lifetime?”

He grinned sheepishly. “It’s all theory. Too much for a saddle burn like me.”

“Still, it’s a good idea. It would be fun to be a part of something like that.” She reached across to the kitchen counter and snagged the wine bottle. “Another glass to go with the last piece of pizza?”

“Thank you. And tonight I clear away.”

“Be my guest. I’ll make us some decaf.” She was aware of his eyes on her as she moved about the kitchen. She found herself holding her stomach in.

As she set his cup before him and slid back into her seat, she said, “Marshall told me you’d had a run of bad luck lately.”

He froze with his good hand halfway to his lips and stared at her over the rim with narrowed eyes. “What else did he tell you?”

His voice was hard and flat.

She stammered, “Th-that’s all, really. Something about losing your brother?”

He set the cup down and closed his eyes. When he opened them a millisecond later, he’d put his pleasant expression back in place. “Killed in an automobile accident a couple of years ago south of Lyons in France while I was in hospital with this.” He held up his gloved hand. “Along with my wife.”

She realized she wanted him to be unencumbered by wives, fiancées or even casual girlfriends. Unlikely.

She said, “I’m so sorry. Both of them? At the same time?”

“They were in the same car. Mine, as it happens.”

“While you were in the hospital? In Scotland?”

“Yes. Let’s drop it, shall we?”

“I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Is there anybody waiting for you now in Scotland?” Vic felt a jolt. Of course he’d have a wife at his age. Did he have a second wife now? Someone waiting patiently for him back in Oban? She’d never asked.

“Indeed there is.”

Her heart fell.

“My father’s brother, Hamish, the stereotypical big braw Scotsman, and my mother’s brother, Vlado, who is about half as big and twice as feisty. They’re keeping up the place while I’m gone. And as many relatives as there are grains of sand on the beach at Dover.”

No wife, then. Or none he planned to tell her about. She sighed in relief.

“So, boss-lass, do you have a deck of cards?”

She laughed. “Sure. You play gin?”

“Two-handed poker. It’s early yet. We could play for matchsticks if you’ve got ’em.”

“We could play for a penny a point if you prefer.”

He shook his head.

“Hey, I’ll have you know I am a veteran of any number of tack-room poker games.”

“Get the cards and the matchsticks.”

An hour later Vic was down to five matchsticks, while Jamey’s pile threatened to roll off the kitchen table onto the floor.

“Full house,” he said, laid his cards down and pulled the small pile of matchsticks onto his side of the table.

She tossed hers down. “Two lousy pairs. Shoot! How do you do that?”

He leaned back in his chair, hooked his good hand in his belt, and smiled a lazy smile at her. “I could win this place off you before morning if I had a mind to.”

“You’re cheating. You’ve marked the cards somehow.”

“No. The cards aren’t marked. Do you know what a ‘tell’ is?”

“No idea.”

He leaned across the table and gently touched his index finger to the left corner of her mouth. “Every time you bluff or draw to an inside straight or try to fill a flush, you poke the tiniest bit of your tongue out the corner of your mouth.”

“I do not.”

“Oh, yes, you do. And when you think you’ve got a pat hand I cannot possibly beat, you hold the cards straight up like this,” he demonstrated, “and take a single deep breath before you bet.”

She felt the flush start around her toenails.

He threw back his head and laughed. “Those are your tells, sweetheart. I could tell you were lying across a crowded room if you were talking to the Queen of England.”

“Dammit!” She reached over with both hands and scooped up his matchsticks, then bolted out of her chair and into the living room waving her clenched fists above her head. “You cheated! I win!”

He whooped and charged after her. “Come back here with my winnings!”

The dogs began to bark frantically and joined in the chase.

“No fair!” She skittered around the corner and into her bedroom.

He slid after her.

They both fell on the bed howling with laughter.

He grabbed the fists she had clenched over her head and rolled her over. “Never steal from a Gypsy, darling. We’ll cast the evil eye on you.”

She sucked in a breath.

So did he.

She could feel the weight of his body on hers. He was suddenly dead serious, those black eyes boring into hers. She couldn’t look away, didn’t want to, wanted to drown in his eyes, feel the strength of his hands holding her wrists.

His kiss was hard, demanding, forcing her lips against her teeth. Without her will, her lips parted for his questing tongue, which she met with her own. Her body writhed beneath him as though it had developed a mind separate from her brain. He was hard against her belly, his thighs against hers, his chest against her breasts. She couldn’t breathe.

Her loins ached.

The strength went out of her.

An instant later he rolled off her, stood and turned away. “I’m sorry. That was unforgivable.”

She raised herself on her elbows. Her breath shuddered in her throat. “You didn’t do it alone.”

He didn’t turn to look at her. “And I’ve wanted to do it since the moment I saw you. I just didn’t realize how much until this minute. Forgive me.”

“For what? Things got a little out of hand. Big deal. Call it the wine.”

“I’ll sleep in the barn.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Sleep upstairs.” She went to him, stood behind him without touching him and said softly, “You’re a gentleman, Jamey McLachlan. And my guest. You’re not the sort of man to betray a hostess.”

He turned to look at her with anguish in his eyes. “Don’t count on that, lass.” He strode to the front door and took his jacket from the coat rack. “I’ll walk down to the barn and check on things. Be back in a few minutes.”

THE NIGHT HAD TURNED bitter with a three-quarter moon riding in a sky so full of stars it seemed to pulse. His hands in his pockets for warmth, Jamey loped down the hill to the stable. How could he have been so stupid?

How could she?

It was her fault. She was too damned trusting, too damned sexy, too damned appealing, and she didn’t even have sense enough to know it!

They were both too hungry, that was the problem. His wife had been dead more than two years. Not that she’d been particularly interested in lovemaking—well, not with him, at any rate. But then, he’d never been able to turn her on the way little brother Robert apparently had.

And according to Hamish, Vic’s husband had been a loudmouth brute.

Jamey should be shouting for joy. Her vulnerability would make his job a hell of a lot easier. If he took her to bed and did it right, he’d have her climbing on a horse again merely to please him so that he would continue to please her. He’d have her lending him a trailer and truck and practically begging him to steal the stallion.

He leaned against a tree. He couldn’t do it. Not that he didn’t want Vic. He did. He wanted her as he had not wanted another woman in years. But he simply could not allow himself to make love to her—assuming she’d let him—and betray her afterward. She deserved better. She deserved a man who valued her. A man who saw what she needed and met those needs. A man who would cosset and protect and adore her. Someone who would give her the respect her first husband had not.

Not a man who intended to force her to conquer her greatest fears, then rob her blind.

He walked into the darkened stable and listened for a moment to the stampings and snufflings of the sleeping horses. He leaned over Roman’s stall door and began to whistle a tune under his breath. The stallion sauntered over to have his forehead scratched. “What am I going to do about you, old son?” he asked.

The stallion wickered softly.

“I owe Jock McLachlan his dream. He left it to me when he left me the yard. And I want it for him—want you for him, if you’re all I think you can be.

But does it have to be at the expense of my honor and Vic’s trust?

CHAPTER SIX

“HEY, COOL MOTORCYCLE!” Albert’s nephew Kenny said as he walked into Vic’s office the following morning. “Who’s it belong to?”

Vic jumped guiltily. Above her head she could hear the scrape of furniture being dragged across the floor. Jamey was safely out of Kenny’s way. What Kenny didn’t see, he didn’t report to Albert, and what Albert didn’t know, he wouldn’t worry about.

In many ways, having a protector the size and shape of Albert was a godsend, but there were times when she wished he had a bit less Doberman in him and a bit more spaniel.

“Hey, Kenny,” Vic said. “The motorcycle belongs to one of the clients. He’s leaving it here while he’s out of town.” She didn’t normally tell bald-faced lies, but this was an emergency. Albert did not need to climb out of a sickbed to check her out. “How’s Albert? Is somebody looking after him and Linette?”

“They’re fine. Well, not fine. Albert’s fussing when he’s not asleep, which is mostly. Linette is getting over it, but she still feels pretty achy. Albert sent me over this morning on my way to school to see if you needed me this afternoon to muck out stalls and stuff.”

“You’ve got your hands full with college, young man. And I’m managing fine.”

“Has that disloyal Benito come back from Juarez yet?”

Vic laughed. “He’s not disloyal. He was just homesick. How would you like to be a thousand miles from your family at Christmas? He’ll probably show up again in March when his money runs out and the weather’s warmer. You have to admit, he works hard when he’s here.”

“Yeah. Well, Albert says y’all have got to have somebody you can count on. This place is too big to run with just y’all.”

“I’m looking, Kenny, but in the meantime having you to help out on the weekends is plenty. I promise you, I am not suffering. Tell Albert to relax and enjoy being poorly, and tell Linette not to brain him if he starts complaining. I’ll call later this afternoon.”

Overhead something crashed. “What’s that?” Kenny asked, looking in the direction of the noise. “You got possums or something up there?”

Vic stood and quickly moved him out into the hall. “Just one of the clients hunting for something. Don’t worry.” She practically shoved him toward the front door. “Go to school before you’re late. And thanks for stopping by.”

He moved, still glancing over his head. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, yes, yes. I promise. Now scat.”

She waved as Kenny’s ancient Toyota wound its way down the driveway. Close one. She knew she was borrowing only a small amount of time with Jamey McLachlan until somebody snitched to Albert or, even worse, to Liz or Mike in Florida. She hoped it wouldn’t dawn on Kenny that the only vehicle outside the stable had been her old truck. Any client upstairs would have had to materialize out of thin air.

Vic had sworn Angie to secrecy over lunch, and Angie was usually trustworthy. But people kept doing stuff for Vic’s own good. As though she were some ditzy idiot who needed protecting from her own bad decisions.

Well, hiring Jamey McLachlan had so far proved to be the best decision for ValleyCrest she’d made since she convinced Mike Whitten to set up an after-school riding program for his daughter and her classmates. That had eventually resulted in Liz and Mike’s marriage, and his daughter Pat’s great strides as a junior rider. And muchneeded solvency for ValleyCrest, which had suffered after Vic’s husband, Frank, an internationally ranked trainer, had died suddenly.

She had no intention of using any of Mike’s money to subsidize ValleyCrest, but she took a certain amount of comfort in knowing that he had offered to bail them out if necessary.

As it was, he was paying for the renovation of the old family home and for some repainting and repair to the cottage.

For the first time in her life, Vic found herself with no one looking over her shoulder. She’d always considered herself to be tough-minded and independent, but in reality she’d been under her grandmother’s thumb, then under Frank’s, and then there were Albert and Liz and the clients and Lord knew who else. Sometimes she felt as though the entire world spent its time pulling on her, demanding her attention.

She couldn’t boss Albert or Liz. Actually, they usually did the bossing. She hated confrontations with either of them.

But Jamey worked for her.

Well, sort of.

She’d been in her room with the door shut when he returned from the barn last night, and had heard him mount the stairs to his bedroom. This morning he’d been gone before she got up. The man apparently didn’t require as much sleep as the average raccoon.

So far today she had not seen him—only the evidence of his presence. Morning chores were already complete. Amazing. He must be physically exhausted.

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