скачать книгу бесплатно
She followed her instincts on the streets that wound around for no reason and finally found the last one on the north side, where one of the houses backed up on the acreage she’d just crossed and the barn she’d just burgled. A bitter chuckle rang out, loud in the truck. It didn’t sound like hers but it must have been.
Her hand ached to hit the horn and summon Brock-the-Builder and his new wife, both of whom belonged here so un-equivocably—he with his fake hair and she with her fake breasts—into the yard or at least to the window so she could wave at them while she drove past. Then, in the morning, when the guys went to feed and discovered Ari was missing, Brock would know who took her.
He would never, ever, in a million years think Clea had done it herself. He might suspect she’d hired someone, but she wanted him to know she hadn’t needed to hire to get it done.
She wanted him to know her real spirit was coming back to life. She was stronger now, strong enough to confront him.
But not strong enough to let go of Ariel, now that I just got her. Better be careful.
She slowed more and idled in front of the house—ugly fake Southern mansion, with even the proportions of the pillars all wrong. Just as she’d expected. He had a new wife with fake breasts and bad taste.
Clea’s foot tapped the accelerator to make the motor growl, a noise she liked to think of as threatening.
Take that, Brock. You’d better not come after my mare.
He would, though. She knew him too well—as opposed to her realization, when she’d finally gathered the courage to leave him, that he had never known her at all.
Well, honestly, how could he? She hadn’t known herself. She’d been afraid to face her real feelings and afraid to assert her own will—when it went up against Daddy’s or Brock’s. Well, no more.
Get out. You have miles and miles and hours and hours to think about this.
She stepped on the accelerator, laid the gas to her truck and roared her way along the empty street toward the exit of the pretend-town and the still-sleeping man in the guardhouse. A frisson of new excitement mixed with relief zigzagged its way down her spine where the sweat was drying. It carried her to I-20 and kept her wits and her reflexes sharp as she merged into the traffic. She forgot about everything except reminding herself to allow for the length of her new trailer when she changed lanes and keeping her foot light on the accelerator so she could stay within the speed limit.
Of course, that was probably the best way to get noticed by a highway patrolman. She seemed to be the only person on the road traveling at a speed less than ninety miles an hour; the huge trucks whipping past made her dizzy. She’d have to get tough—only 1,499 more miles to go, or something like that. Maybe more.
Clea still couldn’t believe that she was here, in the driver’s seat, for the long haul all the way to Montana. Just like the old cattle drives—Texas to Montana. Well, Charles Goodnight had been one of her ancestors so surely she could do this.
She’d hauled her own horse a few times before on short trips to ride with friends. Also, she’d taken turns driving during the thousands of miles she’d traveled during the serious horse-showing days of her high school and college years, but it was her trainer or his assistant who did most of it. Many times she’d flown while they drove.
However, for this job she couldn’t exactly pay her trainer or hire a horse-transport company, could she?
No, she could not. For the first time ever she was on her own.
She gave herself a tight little smile in the rear-view mirror as she checked her surroundings and settled firmly into the slow lane at a solid seventy miles per hour, which she pretty much had to maintain or get hit from behind. The look of that smile lingered in her mind. She’d meant it to be a show of courage and not the scared grimace she’d glimpsed.
Clea lifted her chin and smiled again. This one was better. Scared or not, she wasn’t giving up or giving in or giving back. No way.
Free at last. Freedom. Free. I’m free. Free.
“Free.” She said it out loud. After a lifetime of being Daddy’s girl and Brock’s girl. Wife hadn’t applied to her because she’d had no more decision-making power married to Brock than she’d had with Daddy. Well, she was growing up now. She would show them she could take care of herself.
The most exciting thing about freedom was that she could do whatever she wanted. She could train Ariel herself and she could buy a trail horse or two to keep Ari company and she could go exploring. She could please herself and not worry about pleasing any man.
She could take all the pictures she wanted and work around the clock at becoming a professional photographer instead of a hobbyist, if that was what felt like the right thing to do. She could do anything, just as long as she had enough money to pay for her keep and Ari’s.
And maybe in the process she’d find whatever she was meant to do in her life.
But for now, she wouldn’t think that far ahead. She had secretly scrimped and saved for months. Selling possessions, lying about some uses of her horse money, writing checks forty dollars over the total for groceries and taking photos at horse shows for cash. Now she had enough money hidden to get her through a year at the place she’d leased and some things she could sell if necessary.
In two years, when she turned thirty, she’d have access to the trust fund from her mother. Until then, she could get a job of some kind. In the long run, if she couldn’t break into photography, which was a tough, tough field to make it in, she’d go into interior design or something that would give her a decent lifestyle. For one thing, she was determined to prove to Brock and Daddy that she could take care of herself.
Not in the style to which she was accustomed, that was for sure. She’d be living a lot differently this next year. Her new life would be stark in comparison to the old one. However, being able to breathe free and become her own real self would be worth any sacrifice.
But right now, her really most challenging goal was to hide this horse from Brock. He would be livid when he found out she had taken Ari. She closed her eyes for a split second and then concentrated on the traffic to banish him from her mind. She couldn’t bear to think about him anymore.
Revenge wouldn’t be her biggest satisfaction from this theft. Companionship would be, along with the relief of rescuing the mare. She and Ariel had a five-year history—the same amount of time as she and Brock—and she’d always been much closer to the mare than to her husband, now that she thought about it.
She and Ariel understood each other. Clea needed this mare. She loved her more than any horse she’d ever owned, even though she was by far the most ornery, four-legged creature alive—when she wanted to be. Well, maybe not more than Prince-the-Pony, but Clea had been a child then and children loved with a purity adults couldn’t match.
Relief flooded Clea then with such a sudden intensity it made her shiver and clutch harder onto the wheel. As if she’d saved her own life along with Ariel’s.
On one level, that was true. Right now, clinging to the courage to defy both Daddy and Brock and to try to make a new life alone took every ounce of strength she had.
This wasn’t a theft. This was refusing to be robbed a second time. But thinking about the past would do nothing but bring her down. She moved her mind to the future and tried to imagine herself and Ariel in their new surroundings.
The realtor who also managed the rentals at the ranch had described a rustic place with several far-flung cabins, each with its own small barn. The rent included the use of a heated indoor arena—a necessity for anyone who wanted to work with horses in the winter—and a stall in that same building during the winter months. Hundreds of miles of trails. Privacy. Great views, gorgeous natural beauty. Help from him when needed, solitude when she desired.
That man had better have been telling her the truth. Clea needed to be alone so she could sort out her mind. She was planning to do everything online except buy her groceries. Logging on as a guest on her best friend Sherilyn’s account, of course, so the people Brock would hire to find her couldn’t do it that way.
She’d be at her cabin alone all winter. What would it be like to be snowed in? She’d have to prepare by bringing in supplies of food and books and camera batteries and photo printer paper and plenty of wood to burn in case she lost electricity. Maybe she should get some snowshoes. She already had skis, which she’d shipped ahead with quite a lot of her other stuff. Maybe just surviving would keep her busy.
Clea would have to do her own barn chores for Ari and whatever inexpensive horse or horses she could find to keep Ari company. Most of her barn chores in the past had been done by other people, true, but she knew how. She could do it. She’d helped out at a million horse shows, hadn’t she?
Being the wife and hostess of a successful man had given her some skills, but how many paying jobs existed for a woman who could pretend to be fascinated when she was bored stiff—both in and out of bed? She raised her eyebrows to her reflection in the mirror. Well, it would be an asset in the oldest profession, which, if she hadn’t truly loved Brock—or thought she did at first—she would compare to her position as his wife.
No more. Never again would she give a man that power. Her days of catering to and obeying a man were gone.
Firmly, Clea looked at the road and the traffic. She blocked the past out of her mind one more time. That was another skill of hers—compartmentalizing—and she needed to use it now. No memories. No more. Just adventure ahead.
She concentrated on the sound of the tires on the road and tried to imagine details of her new life while the miles rolled by. A trip to Jackson with Brock to meet some business associates and another to ski at a private lodge near Kalispell were the only times she’d been to Wyoming or Montana. She’d never seen this place she’d leased. There wasn’t even a picture of it on the Internet.
She tried to imagine the first day, which she intended to sleep away. After so many miles and trying to sleep in the trailer—pray God she could find a fairgrounds or two where she could get Ariel out for some exercise and maybe even park close enough that she could leave her in a stall overnight—she’d sleep for a week.
Oh, no, she couldn’t! Not even for one day and night. She’d have nobody else to do the chores twice a day.
Get it down, C. Real life ahead.
She merged smoothly onto I-35E and, proud of the way she’d handled a crowded tangle of traffic, sped north, headed for Oklahoma. And then Kansas. Then Nebraska. And then Wyoming. All the way, well no, more like halfway west into it and finally north to Montana. Maybe her new home state forever—if she found out that she liked lots of winter.
Clea had intended to stop at the first convenience store she saw after she crossed Red River to buy a cup of coffee to celebrate but instead she just kept on going. Stopping would break her momentum and she felt compelled to continue moving away.
Just past Ardmore, though, the trailer started rocking. It shocked her at first and then she hoped she’d imagined it. But no. Ari was weaving and rocking it. Definitely. Clea could feel it swaying behind the truck, pulling the whole rig to one side, then the other.
Damn. She should’ve known Miss Ari wouldn’t be too good for too long.
Well, who could blame her? She wasn’t exactly used to being kidnapped from her stall in the middle of the night or to being without other horses for company.
But that wasn’t the reason. Diva that she was, center of the universe as she felt she was, Ariel felt compelled to try to get any bit of control over this whole operation that she could.
Finally, after a mile or two of intermittent rocking and swaying, Clea saw a rest area up ahead and pulled off the road. She turned off her lights because this was still the horse country of southern Oklahoma and north Texas where everybody knew everybody in the industry and someone might stop to see who she was and if she needed help.
Clea got out, walked back the length of the trailer, switched on her little flashlight and turned off the interior lights before she opened the door. She felt like a spy in a movie as she stepped in and shined the light over Ariel, who was still swaying rhythmically.
When the light reached her head, Ariel turned toward Clea with her eyes flashing, lifted a front hoof and pawed, hard.
Before Clea could open her mouth to make soothing sounds, Ari did it again and then started to rear, fighting the rope to try to get her head up, tearing at it with a vicious strength.
A terrible chill bloomed in Clea’s gut as she started moving toward the horse, making soothing noises, trying to get her mind together enough to make words. What if she’d brought Ari out here only to have her break a leg and die?
She hadn’t tied her tight enough. She’d been too happy to have her—too excited, too scared, too eager for Ariel to eat hay, too much in a hurry and too careless to make sure the tie was short enough.
Clea looked at it again. No. It wasn’t all that long.
She started stroking the mare’s muscled rump, over and over, as she started a soothing line of patter and moved toward Ari’s head.
“It’s just you, isn’t it, Ari? You’re not happy. You’re a problem child, but hey, you’ve made your point. I should’ve asked you first if you wanted to go for a long drive. Next time I’ll consult you. Okay, baby. It’s okay. Calm down now.”
The real problem was that this mare loved to be difficult and was under the illusion that she was David Copperfield. She planted her rear feet on the rubber matting and rose even higher on the front end.
Clea wanted to grab the rope and try to pull Ari down but she didn’t want to make the contrariness worse. She could hardly bear to watch. Almost.
The left hoof almost caught in the feeder.
A broken leg and it would be all over.
Wild thoughts raced each other through her head while she froze in horror. What would she do? She couldn’t shoot her own horse. She couldn’t pay for a surgery and a long recovery….
Come on, Clea. Stop it.
She set her jaw. She hadn’t gone through all this fear and effort to let it all end now, before the mare ever even saw Montana.
Ari came down and stood, trembling. Clea stepped up to the mare’s head and took hold of the rope.
“You’re working yourself into a fit,” she said in her most authoritative tone. “Ariel, settle down.”
She stroked Ari’s nose and talked to her. She patted her neck and talked to her. Ari snorted, then pricked her ears and listened.
“That’s my girl,” Clea murmured. “Now listen, sweetie…”
Sweetie threw her weight as hard as she could from side to side, then kicked out behind and swayed again, harder still. She pinned her ears, jerked her head free and tried to rear again, reaching for the wall.
No choice. No doubt. Clea would have to tranquilize the horse so they could get on down the road. They weren’t even started on this trip yet and Clea hadn’t gone through all her fear and trauma to let it all fall apart now.
Now Ari’s eyes were rolling. She made little choking sounds.
Break a leg or strangle. Great choices.
Without wasting any more breath, Clea turned and moved toward the door.
She jumped to the ground and fighting the urge to hurry—hurry that was beating harder in her veins with every sound that came from Ari—she punched in the numbers to open the door to the dressing room, letting its light come on automatically because it was on the side away from the road. She stepped up into it, closed the door almost all the way and took down the first-aid box.
Stay calm. Be deliberate. Ari was excited enough without sensing more fear from Clea.
She found the Ace tranquilizer and filled a syringe, despite her hands shaking a little. She forced herself to think positively.
Thank God, she’d had sense enough to prepare for this. She’d worried about this very thing because Ari had been hard to haul at times, so she’d asked Sherilyn’s boyfriend, a veterinarian who didn’t know Brock, to sell her the medicine and teach her how to administer it.
Sherilyn was Clea’s hairdresser and best human friend, the only person in whom Clea ever confided. The only person she trusted enough to tell about her plans for a new life, that was for sure.
With the needle and an alcohol wipe in one hand and the flashlight in the other, Clea pushed the door open with the toe of her sneaker, stepped down to the ground, went around back and shouldered the rear door aside. The trailer was still rocking.
“You have to settle down, Ari darlin’,” she said in as soothing a tone as she could muster. “Maybe take a little nap. We’ve gotta get on up the road.”
She kept on and on with the calm, slow words, trying to calm herself as much as the mare and Ariel did actually stand a bit more still when Clea reached her. Part of Clea screamed to hurry before the mare started pulling against the rope again; another part cautioned her to go slowly and do this right. That tension made her bite down on the little flashlight until she thought her teeth might break.
She found what she hoped was a good spot in a muscle—no way did she have the nerve to try for a vein—and tightened her lips around the torch in her mouth while she wiped her target clean. Through her nose she took in a long, deep breath to steady herself and slid the needle in with hands that felt stiff as wood.
Ariel squatted and pulled back but the needle was in. Clea hit the plunger and pushed it all the way.
She pulled the needle out and with a last pat on the butt, left the mare, closed up the back door, went to the dressing room and put things away. Deliberately. Efficiently. Quickly.
Heart hammering—she’d successfully managed her first emergency of the journey!—she jumped out, locked up and headed around the trailer to the truck. Ariel was looking at her through the bars on the window.
Clea felt a broad smile come over her face—victory and relief all mixed up together. She stopped in her tracks and looked at the mare, who was standing still at last. “You just hang on, my girl, and you’ll be a Montana horse before you know it.”
She couldn’t tell whether Ari’s reply expressed excitement or dismay. Whichever, it was a full-hearted whinny that reverberated thrillingly against the rocky walls of the Arbuckle Mountains and echoed up the road.
CHAPTER TWO
THE WIND whipped the stallion’s whinny of alarm up from the valley, a sound so wild and shrill that it rang Jake’s bones. The harem band fled ahead of the red stud snaking them away from the scent of the wildcat and Jake’s own horse danced beneath him. It spoiled his aim.
He used his legs to hold the gelding together and his voice to steady him while he lined up the sight again.
“Stand,” he said, surprised his voice could come out this calm with his chest so tight. “Whoa now.”
His jaw clamped down. He had one shot to save the foal. It had better be now.
The rhythm of the band’s drumming hooves matched the thunder of the blood in his arms. He steadied the rifle, drew his breath, made sure his crosshairs rested on the spot in the middle of the tawny shoulders that were folding into a crouch on the rocky ledge below and ahead of his horse.
For one split second, endless in time, he let the air out of his lungs and slowly squeezed the trigger. The back-and-forth threatening motion of the cougar’s long, black-tipped tail kept going. And going.
The shot went off at the start of the cat’s leap. At first he thought he’d missed, but its body crumpled in midair and dropped out of sight.
Jake dismounted and walked far enough to look over and down. The cougar lay within twenty yards of the foal, but neither its scent nor the sound of the shot had made the little orphan move more than a few inches away from the mare, who lay as dead as the mountain lion.
He guessed the foal at two or three weeks old. It was red like the stud, although the mare was a pale palomino. The mare must not have been dead too long or it wouldn’t still be alive to stand this dogged vigil. Its head was hanging. It wouldn’t last much longer.
What had he done?
