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Amusement lurked in the depths of his dark eyes, as if he’d been aware of her perusal and wasn’t bothered or surprised by it.
He was probably used to women ogling him—a man who looked that good would have to be—but that didn’t excuse her own behavior. It had just been so long since Jewel had looked at a man and recognized him as such.
Around the stables, the men were her employees or customers, and over the past few years, she hadn’t had much of a life beyond the stables. Her instinctive reaction to this man’s arrival at the café had been proof of that. Her response now only reinforced that truth.
“Can I help you?” she asked, the politely neutral tone giving no hint of the hormones zinging around inside of her.
“Actually, I’m here to help you.” His warm, rich voice was as sensual as a caress and caused another quiver of sensation deep in her belly.
She mentally cursed her sister, certain that Crystal was somehow responsible for this man’s appearance here now.
“How do you think you can help me?” she asked cautiously.
“By taking the job you were talking about at the café.”
She looked him over again—had, in truth, not been able to take her eyes off of him—and shook her head. While she didn’t doubt that long, lean body was more than capable of the physical work she needed done, she did doubt that he’d ever done such physical labor. “I’m looking for someone to muck out stalls as well as groom and exercise my horses.”
“That’s what Crystal said,” he agreed.
Yep—her sweet but interfering little sister’s sticky fingerprints were all over this ambush.
“And you are?” she asked, vaguely recalling that he’d offered his name at the café but unable to remember what it was.
“Mac Delgado.”
Her father had taught her that she could learn a lot about a man from his handshake, so she moved forward to take his proffered hand, undeniably curious about this one. His grip was firm, strong and the contact of his palm against hers sent an unexpected jolt of heat through her.
She saw a flicker of something in his eyes, as if he’d felt the jolt, too. Or maybe she was just imagining it. She disengaged her hand and lowered herself into the chair behind her desk. “I have to be honest, Mr. Delgado, you don’t look much like a stable hand.”
He shrugged. “I have a lot of experience with horses and I’m between jobs at the moment.”
She eyed him skeptically but gestured to the chair across from her desk. “Tell me about your experience.”
He sat, somehow owning the space rather than merely occupying it. There was an aura about him, a sense of command, as if he was accustomed to giving orders rather than taking them. It made her wonder again why he was really here, because she didn’t believe it was to muck out her stalls.
“I assume you’re asking about my experience with horses?” There was just the hint of a smile on his lips, and the gleam in those sinfully dark eyes suggested he was flirting with her.
She’d known guys like Mac Delgado before—guys who trusted their good looks and easy charm to get them what they wanted in life, whatever that might be. Jewel wasn’t going to fall for it, not this time, no matter how hard her heart pounded when he smiled at her.
Still, there was a part of her—a shallow, sex-deprived part—that was tempted to hire him just so she could have the pleasure of looking at him every day. Because she had no doubt that those muscles would ripple very nicely as he mucked out stalls—if he knew which end of a pitchfork to grab hold of. But hiring a man who obviously expected to get the job by offering little more than his name and a smile would be a mistake, and Jewel Callahan didn’t make mistakes. Not anymore and especially not when it came to the business that carried her name.
“Yes, Mr. Delgado. I was asking about your relevant job experience.”
He propped one foot onto the opposite knee, a casual pose that allowed her to picture him in Levi’s and flannel, rather than the designer threads he was wearing. “I grew up around horses,” he told her. “Even before I could walk, I was sitting on a pony.”
“That doesn’t prove you know the difference between a curry comb and a hoof pick,” she noted.
He shrugged again, and she couldn’t help but notice how his shirt moulded to the broad shoulders. “I’ve groomed more than a few horses, even helped train some of them.”
“Do you have references?”
“Give me a trial period,” he said. “A week to prove that I can do the job.”
“No references,” she concluded.
“I’m a hard worker.”
“This is a busy stable—”
“Three days,” he interrupted.
She shook her head with more than a little regret as she pushed her chair back from her desk. “I don’t have the time or the patience to train anyone.”
“Give me a chance—I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
“I might have been willing to give you that chance, if not for your hands.”
His brows lifted. “What’s wrong with my hands?”
“They lack the calluses of a man accustomed to physical labor.”
“I’ve spent the last few years at school,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t risk my life around animals who weigh more than six times as much as I do if I didn’t know I wasn’t capable.”
She leaned back in her chair. “At school where?”
“If I give the right answer, do I get the job?”
“You’re assuming there is a right answer.”
His smile was filled with confidence and charm, and she felt a distinctly feminine flutter in her belly. “Isn’t there?”
“No,” she said. “And no about the job.”
She might end up regretting her hasty decision if no one else responded to her ad, but she instinctively knew that hiring Mac Delgado would present a bigger risk than turning him away. Not just because his experience was unproven, but because of the way her heart raced whenever he was near.
Chapter Two
Four hours later, Marcus had checked out of his hotel and was retracing the route to Callahan Thoroughbred Center after Jewel had—reluctantly—reversed her decision about hiring him.
He wasn’t sure he believed in fate, but he couldn’t deny feeling that he’d been in the right place at the right time—first, when he’d walked into the café and noticed Jewel sitting at the counter, and again when a young stable hand rushed into her office to warn that an expectant mare was having trouble with her labor.
Not just any mare, as it turned out, but one Jewel had raised since it was a newborn filly, and she’d been frantic at the thought of losing both mother and baby.
With the vet more than an hour’s drive away and most of her own personnel at the track in preparation for the next day’s race, she’d had almost no choice but to trust Marcus’s assurance that he could turn the breech foal. Of course, she’d given it her own best effort first, demonstrating more strength and stamina than he would have expected of a woman who was about five-feet-three-inches tall and hardly more than a hundred pounds. And only when her own efforts proved futile had she stepped aside for him.
He’d been sweating when he was done, not just because it was a messy and physically demanding task, but because he knew this was his only chance to convince her to give him a chance. He hadn’t considered why it mattered or why the opinion of a woman he’d only just met meant anything to him, he only knew that it did.
Having been born royal, even if he had been the last of four sons, meant that he was accustomed to a certain amount of deference from the cradle. The wealth he’d inherited aside from his title ensured that he could live his life as he chose, while dictates of custom and tradition established the parameters within which he was expected to make those choices.
Now he was twenty-five years old and still didn’t have a clue about what he really wanted to do with his life—except that at this point he wanted to know Jewel Callahan better. The woman in question, however, had made it clear that she only wanted a hired hand.
Of course, she didn’t know who he was. He’d enrolled in school as Mac Delgado, trusting that the use of his mother’s maiden name as his own would help him avoid media scrutiny and allow him to concentrate on his studies. And it had worked—more successfully even than he’d anticipated. In fact, soon after coming to America he’d realized few of his classmates could find Tesoro del Mar on a map. They certainly never suspected that Mac was a member of the royal family.
His anonymity hadn’t made him any less sought after by the female coeds, confirming that his looks, charm and intelligence were almost as big a draw to members of the opposite sex in America as his royal status had been in Europe. And he found it interesting that the characteristics that had attracted so many women in the past were the same traits that made Jewel wary.
She was grateful to him—he was sure of that. Whether she felt anything beyond appreciation for his actions in delivering the foal he was less certain. But now that he’d been hired on, albeit on a trial basis, he would have some time to find out.
What he found, when he detoured to check on the new foal, was that the woman in question had the same idea.
She was standing at the gate, her arms folded on top of it, her attention riveted on the mare nursing her baby.
“Hard to believe she caused such a fuss only a few hours ago,” Marcus noted.
“And scary to think how differently things might have turned out.” She turned to face him. “I didn’t expect you’d be back so soon.”
“I didn’t have a lot to pack,” he told her.
But before he’d checked out of the hotel, he’d taken the time to shower and change, as he saw she had done, too.
Her jeans had been discarded in favor of a pair of khaki pants, the navy T-shirt replaced by a soft yellow one, and the band that tied her hair back had been removed so that the riotous golden curls tumbled over her shoulders.
She dug something out of her pocket, held it out to him. “The apartments aren’t big or fancy, but they’re conveniently located, a fact which you’ll appreciate at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning.”
He nodded and took the key she offered. “Thanks.”
“There’s a cafeteria on site, but also a refrigerator and microwave and some dishes and cutlery in your room.”
He nodded again.
She tilted her head, and studied him as if he was a mystery she was trying to figure out. “When I told you I didn’t think you were right for the job, I thought that would be the end of it.”
“So did I,” he admitted.
“Why did you follow me to the birthing shed?”
“Curiosity. Impulse.” He lifted a shoulder. “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Well, I’m grateful you did,” she told him. “I could have lost both of them if you hadn’t been here.”
He touched a hand to her arm, to reassure her. When he felt the muscles go taut and heard her breath catch, he knew she was feeling more than just gratitude. Whether or not Jewel Callahan liked him, she wasn’t immune to him.
He let his hand drop away and kept his voice light. “She’s a beautiful filly.”
“‘The prettier they are, the more trouble they are.’”
His brows rose in silent inquiry.
“Jack Callahan’s words of wisdom,” she explained.
“I’m guessing you gave him a lot of trouble.”
Her cheeks flushed in response to the compliment, but there was sadness lurking in the depths of those stormy blue-gray eyes as she shook her head. “Not really.”
“Well, if I’d had to put money on it, I would have guessed the foal was a colt,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you said that she wasn’t due for another couple of weeks, and it’s been my experience that females are rarely on time for anything, never mind early.”
Her lips quirked at the corners, just a little. “I could pretend to take offense at that comment, except that I set my watch ten minutes ahead to help me get where I’m going on time.”
It was the first insight she’d given him of her character, and while it wasn’t a significant revelation, it was enough to give him hope that she might be warming up to him.
“Does it work?” he asked.
The smile nudged a little wider. “Usually.”
The foal, her hunger now sated, curled up in the straw to sleep, and Scarlett moved to the feed bucket for her own dinner.
“Of course, the process of birth doesn’t fit into any kind of schedule,” he acknowledged.
“You obviously have some experience with that,” she noted.
“I was eight years old the first time I saw a foal born.”
And a few years after that, he’d witnessed a breech birth, and the complicated and time-consuming process of turning the foal. Even now, so many years later, he remembered the profound sadness that had washed through him when the roan filly was finally pulled free of her mother’s womb. Even covered in what he’d referred to at the time as the slime of birth, he’d thought she was perfect and beautiful—and he’d known that her complete stillness was unnatural.
“You grew up on a farm?” she asked.
Her question drew him back to the present and made him want to smile. He’d never heard the royal palace described as such, but he supposed, in a way, it might be considered that. “The horses were more of a hobby than anything else.”
“How many?”
“It varied. Sometimes half a dozen, sometimes more than twice that number.”
“We have between eighty and a hundred here at any given time,” she told him.
“I guess that means I’m going to be busy.”
She nodded, her gaze drifting back to the mare and her foal. Another minute passed before she said, “This is a prestigious establishment. The races around here draw crowds from around the world and focus a lot of attention on Callahan. Two years ago, a former British prime minister was at the derby. Last year, it was the Princess Royal from some small country in the Mediterranean.”
“You have a point, I’m guessing, other than name-dropping.”
She nodded. “I can’t afford to make mistakes where the business is concerned.”
“You didn’t make one in hiring me,” he assured her.
“We agreed to a one-week trial period,” she said. “If we’re both satisfied with the way things are working out by the end of the week, we can discuss further terms.”
