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“It’s what I do,” Donovan said. “I work with difficult horses. At least let me spend a few minutes with her.”
A disgusted Mort was already shaking his head.
“If I don’t have her gentled in three hours, I’ll buy her from you,” Donovan said. “I’ll give you double what you paid for her.”
Mort was as surprised as Sheryl. Donovan made the offer without even knowing how much such a purchase would cost him.
“I don’t want to take advantage of you, mister. She really is just a bad horse. It happens.”
“Please.”
At that moment something in Sheryl’s heart melted.
Somehow she knew that Hawk Donovan would never say please for her or any other human.
The dun mare was so afraid, the fear radiating from her in waves touched Hawk to the bone.
Dermot had a small horse ranch a few miles away from town. Nothing like the Donovan Ranch, but respectable, just the same. He boarded and occasionally trained horses, but he wasn’t an expert by any means. The circular corral where the dun mare had been restrained, after kicking at Dermot and breaking the man’s arm, was in good condition.
A lot of horses had been broken here in the past. Hawk could practically smell old fear in the air. Blood and fear and forced domination. He could almost hear the pounding of hooves on the hard ground, could almost smell the blood on the air, even though it had been a long time since anyone had broken a horse here. Most of the horses who entered this corral these days were already tame.
But not the dun mare.
The vet and the man with the broken arm stayed out of the corral. Dermot tried to caution Hawk as he stepped toward the horse, but it only took a few seconds for Hawk to completely dismiss the people who watched as he approached the mare. It was like coming home, stepping into the corral. He belonged here. He was himself here in a way he would never be anywhere else.
“It’s going to be okay, girl,” he said as he approached. Before he proceeded, he untied the mare. Not only had she been tethered to a post with a short rope, her hind legs had been bound. No wonder she was frightened. Her ears were flattened to her head, her eyes were wild. As he released her bonds, he stroked gently and murmured kind words. Meaningless words. Calming sounds that came from deep in his throat. He let the sound of his voice and the touch of his hands soothe her.
When she was free from her restraints, the mare ran. She raced in circles along the boundaries of the corral, snorting and blowing, while Hawk watched silently. He tried to touch the mare’s mind with his while she ran, but she fought against him. Hawk didn’t push to connect with the animal, but he didn’t back away, either. He remained steady. Calm. Gradually the fear in the dun mare faded.
Now and then Hawk glanced at Baby, who had made herself at home near Sheryl Eldanis. Baby didn’t take to many people. She was slow to trust, with good reason. Before Hawk had found her, she’d been treated badly. It had taken years to get her to trust people again. For years she’d flinched when a person came too near. She’d cowered and hidden and waited for blows that would never come again. The mare would be the same way. Trust would not come easily.
When the time was right, Hawk lifted his hand slowly. The mare came to him, no longer running, but loping easily. She walked directly to Hawk, never hesitating, never acknowledging those who watched.
Hawk stroked the mare between the eyes, silently telling the fine animal that he didn’t want to hurt her, that he didn’t intend to break her. They would work together, a team united. No one would be her master. No one would break her spirit. There was no need for fear.
She wasn’t easily convinced. Dermot had tried to break her the old way—with pain and fear. The dun mare’s heart was too wild to be broken, but she would make a fine ally.
Time passed, but Hawk was not aware of it. He linked his mind with the mare’s in a way that was ancient and primal and inexplicable. The dun mare was no longer afraid of him, but she had not forgotten the way she’d been treated in the past few weeks. He whispered in her ear; she responded with a soft snort. Before Dermot there had been another man who’d tried to incite respect with a whip. The mare bore the marks of that method on her flanks. She would never forget, and any rider who tried to take a whip to her might truly be endangered.
But the mare came to trust Hawk. She knew without doubt that he would never hurt her, that he had no desire to possess her.
When the wildness in her eyes had gone and her ears were perked up, Hawk remembered that he and the mare were not alone. Judging by the way the sun hung low in the sky, he’d been out here well over an hour. He glanced at his watch. Almost two hours. He walked toward Eldanis and Dermot, and the mare followed.
People who had never seen him work were usually stunned the first time. These two were no exception. Eldanis wore an easy smile and an expression of bewilderment, but Dermot was truly shocked.
Hawk leaned against the fence, and the dun mare nuzzled him gently. She wanted to play; she wanted to talk. “I’ll need a place to board her until I go home. Is there another stable nearby?”
Dermot wasn’t anxious to believe what he’d seen. His logical mind was trying to dismiss what his eyes showed him. “I haven’t exactly sold her to you yet. You said three hours, and the way I see it you have an hour left.” His chin came up defiantly. “Maybe I should just go ahead and sell her to you, though. She looks fine at the moment, but how do I know she won’t start kicking again as soon as anybody else steps into the corral? This is a fluke, that’s all. Some kind of trick.”
Hawk had no desire to prove anything to this small-minded man who was still breaking horses the same way it had been done a hundred years ago and more.
In Dr. Eldanis’s eyes he saw something much more interesting than disbelief. She was impressed and intrigued. She was interested in what she’d seen him do. Like it or not, he needed her on his side, he needed her to trust him. Since he’d never been a smooth talker, he wasn’t going to win her over with polished explanations and charisma.
But maybe, just maybe, he could convince her that he was trustworthy simply by doing what he did best.
Hawk took a close look at her. She didn’t wear any makeup that he could tell, but then again she didn’t need it. She had a fresh, clean look and flawless skin that didn’t need to be covered. He wondered how she handled the larger animals she treated, since she was petite. Even her face was delicate. Not for the first time, he had to remind himself that he wasn’t here to hook up with a pretty woman, not even for a few hours.
But dammit, he needed her cooperation. He needed her to be on his side.
“I could ride her myself, but that won’t prove anything,” he told Dermot. Then he looked back at Eldanis. “Dermot has a broken arm. What about you?”
Without hesitation she nodded her head.
This afternoon she’d left Cory in charge of the clinic and ridden to the Dermot ranch with Mort and his eldest son, who’d driven his father to town to have the broken arm set. At that time Donovan had followed in his pickup. Now, just barely past dark, she was headed back to Wyatt with Donovan at the wheel and Baby and Laverne curled up in the small back seat. Both animals were fast asleep.
“I want to know everything,” she said, her eyes on Donovan’s impassive face. She sounded much too interested, much too excited. But she couldn’t help herself. Donovan had put on an amazing display. One she could not explain away. “How do you do that? Can you teach me?”
After he had easily hefted her onto the mare’s back, she’d ridden the horse that Mort Dermot had been so sure no one would ever ride without risk of injury. Hawk had stayed close by, ready and able to sweep her off the mare if necessary. But of course, that had not been necessary. Her ride had been uneventful.
Needless to say, Dermot had decided not to sell the mare to Donovan.
“There are a lot of trainers who don’t break horses in the old way,” Donovan explained. “If you’re interested in the various modern methods of horse training, there are classes available across the country. Take your pick.”
“What about you?” she asked quickly. “Do you teach classes?”
“No.” He sounded a little horrified by the prospect.
She had a feeling Hawk Donovan hadn’t learned his skill in any class given by any other trainer. What he had was a gift.
After Donovan had finished his display, Mort had been full of questions. Questions Donovan had either half answered, ignored or bluffed his way through. He did give Mort a list of instructions on how to deal with the mare in the coming days. She was not to be whipped or sacked, she was not to be bound. Mort had agreed to everything, and more questions had been fired at Donovan. They would have been there all night if Donovan hadn’t insisted that he needed to get back to town.
His affinity for four-legged creatures definitely didn’t extend to the people around him. Donovan had been gruff and impatient with Mort and with her. But when he’d been in the corral with the mare he had become beautiful. Sheryl couldn’t explain it and she didn’t even want to try. The way he moved, the way he looked at the mare, the way they’d moved together… It had been like watching poetry. She couldn’t explain it, except to come to the conclusion that Hawk Donovan was obviously more comfortable with animals than he was with people.
She could empathize.
Donovan’s face was lit by the green glow of the dashboard, since the sun had set more than an hour ago. It was a hard face, unforgiving and without gentleness or humor. But it was also an honest face, unlike that man Carpenter. Was Hawk Donovan truly searching for information about his mother?
One more step, and she would be in too deep. The best thing she could do for herself—for her sanity and her peace of mind and the conservation of her well-ordered life—would be to send Donovan packing. She could even offer to ship him the files, if he’d just get out of her life and stay out.
She’d learned to live without a man, without even the hope of one day having a romantic relationship, even though friends and family tried to tell her that she was too young to give up on the concept of love. One bad experience shouldn’t stop her from living, they said.
One bad experience. More than a year of living hell was more like it. Michael had only hit her one time. One time had been more than enough. She’d left him that night, walked out with her pride and her cheek stinging. Her cheek had healed; her pride was still a little bruised.
As if that hadn’t been enough, Michael, a man she had once loved, had turned into a stalker. He’d fooled her completely, swept her off her feet with his charm and his undivided attention and his apparent love. And then when he had her where he wanted her—boom—he’d shown his true face. Could she pick ’em or what?
Since walking out on Michael, Sheryl hadn’t looked at any man or admired one in any way. Pretty faces were a dime a dozen. Hard bodies were easy to come by.
Until Hawk Donovan had walked into her clinic, she hadn’t given much thought to what she’d given up in the name of security. It wasn’t her fault; the man oozed animal magnetism in a way she had never before encountered. What drew her to Donovan? Chemical attraction? Biological need and bad timing? Whatever this was she really didn’t need it.
But like it or not, she wasn’t ready to turn her back on Donovan and his mysteries.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Sheryl said as the lights of Wyatt, such as they were, loomed closer. “You teach me how to do that, and I’ll let you search through the files.”
His head snapped around, but the truck didn’t swerve. He, and the vehicle, remained steady. “You do have them?”
She nodded gently. “They’re in my attic at home. I moved them there when I set up the clinic. I have to warn you, they’re really a mess. I thought about tossing the old boxes out instead of moving them, but at least some of them are the doctor’s files and may be important to local residents who saw him way back when. So I moved the boxes to the house and planned to go through them when I had a chance. Haven’t thought about them much since, until a few days ago when a man impersonating a building inspector showed up at the clinic and ended up asking about the fertility clinic records.”
“Do you think that’s the same man who broke in last night?” he asked.
“I do.” She was suddenly sure Donovan would never do such a thing. He might bully his way past her and demand to see what he was looking for, but he would never sneak in and nose around. It wasn’t his style.
He braked, for no apparent reason, and slowed the truck to a crawl. They were still miles from town, and there wasn’t another vehicle in sight. Before she could ask why he was stopping, a deer bounded across the road, caught in the beam of the truck’s headlights. If Hawk hadn’t stopped, he surely would have hit the doe.
As he put the truck in motion again, she asked, “How did you—”
“I’m starving,” he interrupted. “Do you eat?”
It was such an inelegant and obviously unplanned invitation, she had to smile. “Just about every day.”
“The hotel where I’m staying has a restaurant and the food is pretty good. Wanna grab a bite?”
She hadn’t had a date since moving to Wyatt. Not that she hadn’t been asked, but with her new business and fixing up the house she’d bought and taking care of her animals she simply hadn’t had time for a social life. To be honest, she hadn’t had a date since ending her relationship with Michael. Love hadn’t been enough to get past his demands. He’d been looking for a wife who would be there every night when he came home. A woman who would put his desires and career and worth above her own. The first and only time she’d challenged him outright, he’d responded with a fist.
He hadn’t let her go easily. For months she’d turned around and found him watching. He had never touched her again, but the way he’d followed her, the way he’d hung on…it wasn’t natural. It was no wonder that she was still skittish where men were concerned. Dating was just too risky.
Not that dinner with Donovan would be a date, mind you, but they would be eating together, and people were bound to notice and talk. Still, it had been two years since she’d sent Michael packing. Maybe it was time.
“Sure,” she said, her heart fluttering briefly.
Donovan obviously didn’t want to talk about the deer, and maybe that was for the best. As she watched his profile and tried to make sense of everything she’d seen of this man, she got the distinct feeling that she didn’t want to know all his secrets.
Chapter 4
Hawk almost groaned aloud when he reached the top of the pull-down stairs, flipped the switch that turned on the uncovered bulb that hung in the center of the room and peered into the attic. There were dozens of cardboard boxes stored here and there, most of them unmarked, all of them showing signs of years of wear and neglect. He glanced over his shoulder and down to where Sheryl stood at the foot of the rattletrap steps.
“You moved all these boxes up here by yourself?”
She shrugged and smiled.
In spite of the fact that she didn’t look strong enough to handle the task on her own, he wasn’t really surprised. Moving all these boxes from the clinic to this attic had been a tough job, but Sheryl Eldanis had energy. Not a too-much-caffeine kind of energy, but a real, pure strength and quiet enthusiasm. He didn’t imagine she’d ever considered a chore and wondered whether she could handle it. Besides, when he’d lifted her onto the mare he’d discovered that, petite or not, she had muscles. Even though his reason for being here was an important one, the man in him couldn’t help but wonder what she’d look like in something other than those baggy clothes. Or even better, in nothing at all.
He stepped into the center of the attic and turned around slowly. It was an ordinary enough attic, with bare wood floors and exposed beams and two windows that looked down on the front yard. The ceiling was high enough for him to stand here in the middle of the space, but if he moved more than a step or two to the side he’d have to duck.
And like most other attics, it was full of junk. Along with a broken lamp, a rusty birdcage and a rocking chair that had to be older than the house, there were newer boxes mixed in with the older ones he was interested in, most of them labeled with black marker. Kitchen. Bedroom. Linens. Winter clothes. Sheryl’s own things stored with the rest. Unlike her boxes, the ones he needed to search weren’t marked at all. Where to start?
Sheryl didn’t join him, but she climbed up the stairs to peer through the square opening in the attic floor. “If you need help, I can come back after I get the animals fed.”
“No,” he said, his eyes on one particularly nasty-looking stack of mildewy boxes. “I can’t even tell you what I’m looking for. I guess I’d better just dig in and see what I can find.” He grabbed a box at random and set it on the floor, then knelt down to open it. It smelled of musty old paper, and while there were a few file folders in the box, most of the paperwork was loose and completely unorganized.
“Okay.” Sheryl backed away slowly. “Holler if you need anything.” And then she was off to feed her animals. From what little he’d seen as he’d walked in through the kitchen and to the stairway, she had a few. Cats, dogs, a colorful parrot that had called him “meathead” as he’d walked past the living room downstairs.
Hawk had learned to tune down his abilities when he needed to, and he did that now. He adjusted the part of his brain that could see and feel and hear things others couldn’t even imagine and concentrated on the papers before him.
Somewhere in here was information that could help Cassie. The woman in the pharmacy hadn’t sent him on a wild-goose chase. What they needed had to be in one of these boxes; he couldn’t entertain any other possibility.
A fertility clinic. Even though he had never expected to find such a place in his background, he shouldn’t be surprised. All his life he’d wondered about his parents. Who were they? Why had they given their twins away? When he’d discovered his gift with animals he’d wondered if they’d known. Was that the reason they’d given him up? Now there were Cassie’s flashes of precognition to take into account. But how could their parents have known when they looked at their infant twins that they’d be different?
He hadn’t given his biological parents much thought in the past few years. In adolescence he had almost become obsessed with them, but eventually he’d decided to put them, and their reasons for giving him up, out of his mind. If his parents hadn’t wanted him, then why the hell should he care who they were and what they were like? It was easier to put them out of his mind than it was to wonder all the damn time. Cassie’s seizures had fired up his curiosity all over again.
Hawk took his time with the task before him, carefully studying each sheet of paper. Most of what he scanned didn’t make any sense to him. Chemistry had never been his best subject in school, and this… A lot of what he discovered were formulas and medical data. Much of what he found in the manila folders was private information, women’s medical files. He felt strange, perusing such personal information. But he couldn’t set aside the papers without checking each one. Notes were scribbled in the margins here and there. Names that meant nothing to him appeared more than once. He tried to drink it all in, just in case a name or a date came to mean something to him later.
Hawk tossed one useless folder aside and grabbed another. Maybe Cassie was right and he should’ve hired this chore out. He didn’t know what he was looking for, and besides, he didn’t spend his time at home sitting in a cramped room going through papers. He practically lived outdoors. He needed fresh air in his lungs, sunshine and moonlight on his face.
But this was not a job he was willing to hand over to anyone else, no matter what the cost might be. His secrets, and Cassie’s secrets, wouldn’t be safe with anyone else.
Not even an unusually pretty vet.
“You stink.”
Sheryl added water to Bruce’s dish. “Can’t you say ‘Polly want a cracker’ like a normal bird?”
“Bite me.”
Normally finding a home for a beautiful talking bird wasn’t a problem, but Bruce had been trained in a home where his primary teacher had been a teenage boy who thought it was funny to train the colorful parrot to insult everyone who passed by. “You stink” and “bite me” were actually not too bad, considering Bruce’s repertoire.
Sheryl’s mind was elsewhere as she fed the other animals. Two dogs, three cats and a bird. Some of them she’d brought to Wyatt with her; others she’d collected since her arrival in town. They’d all taken to the new house well, settling in as if they’d always lived here. She had a variety of animal beds here and there, and there was a small doggie door in the kitchen that allowed the animals to go into the fenced backyard at any time.
The pets she had accumulated over the years were her family. They loved without question or demand, and it was nice to have them waiting for her when she came in the door after a long day. They needed her; she needed them. And yes, they were her family. Like most families they were a bit dysfunctional. Bruce was temperamental and was given to bad language. Bogie was the shy ugly duckling, and Howie could be aggressive on occasion, like all Chihuahuas. There were times when Smoky and Princess tormented the dogs, as cats often do, but the situation never got out of control.
Laverne was independent and thought herself better than all the pets who had come after her, which was why she usually went to work with Sheryl. It was just safer that way.
The other animals in Sheryl’s house were suspicious of Baby at first, but once they’d all sniffed one another properly, they got along just fine. Besides, the big yellow dog had the Laverne seal of approval, and the others all knew that didn’t come easily.
Considering the way animals took to Donovan, Sheryl was a little surprised that they didn’t all climb the rickety stairs to stand watch while he pored through the files. But they didn’t. The animals left him alone.
So did she, even though she was dying to go up there and jump into that nasty chore with him. There was something desperate and touching about his need to find this information about his mother, and she wanted to do what she could. Sympathy: it was her downfall. It was the reason she had three temperamental cats, two ugly dogs and a personality-challenged bird no one else wanted. The last thing she needed to do was add a surly man to her menagerie.
Dinner at the hotel restaurant had been pleasant enough, even though she’d done most of the talking. Donovan had paid attention, especially when she’d spoken about her practice. His love for animals was genuine and deep. If they had nothing else in common, they had that. But there was a definite wall, a barricade so tangible she could almost count the bricks. She just didn’t have the time, or the heart, to try to break through that wall.
Besides, Donovan would be gone as soon as he found whatever he was looking for in her attic. He might thank her, and he might even mean it, but once he had what he’d come here for, he’d go home to Texas and she’d never see him again. So it would be foolish to get interested.
She’d been foolish before, and it was no fun.
When he’d been up there for more than three hours, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She made a large glass of iced tea and carried it up the stairs. All the kiddies—her animals—were sleeping. Even Baby. She needed to get to sleep herself. Tomorrow would be an early day, as every day had been since opening her practice. Besides, her animals wouldn’t let her sleep late, even on Sundays. The cats might let her lie in bed past six on occasion, but the dogs were relentlessly cheerful in the morning, and they wanted everyone to rise with the sun.
Donovan was startled to see her when she popped into the attic. The strain of sorting through the mess was showing on him already. His eyes looked tired, and he’d run his fingers through his dark hair more than once, probably in sheer frustration. The heavy stubble on his cheeks indicated that it had been a long day.
He looked much too tempting, sitting there. Sheryl wanted to do more than bring him tea. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair, lay her hands on those broad shoulders, tell him everything was going to be all right, even though she had no idea if anything would ever be right again.
