Mackenzie's Magic

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"I’m okay," she said in reassurance. "As long as I remember to move slowly and not jar my head, I can manage. I need to call my brother as soon as possible, so he can—"

"I can’t let you do that," he said calmly.

She blinked, her dark eyes growing cool. "I beg your pardon?" Her tone was polite, but she let him hear the steel underlying it.

His lips twitched, and a ruefully amused look entered his eyes. "I said I can’t let you do that." The amusement spread to his mouth, turning the twitch into a smile. "What are you going to do, fire me?"

Maris ignored the taunt, because if she couldn’t prove Sole Pleasure was in danger, neither of them would have to worry about a job for some time. She lay still, considering this sudden change in the situation, possibilities running through her mind. He was too damn sure of himself, and she wondered why. He didn’t want her to call for help. The only reason she could come up with was that he must be involved, somehow, in the plot to kill Sole Pleasure. Maybe he was the one who’d been hired to do it. Suddenly, looking up into those blue eyes, Maris felt the danger in him again. It wasn’t just a sensual danger, but the inherent danger of a man who had known violence. Yes, this man could kill.

Sole Pleasure might already be dead. She thought of that big, sleek, powerful body lying stiff, never to move again, and a nearly crippling grief brought the sheen of tears to her eyes. She couldn’t control that response, but she allowed herself no other. Maybe she was wrong about MacNeil, but for Sole Pleasure’s sake, she couldn’t take the chance.

"Don’t cry," he murmured, his voice dropping into a lower note. He lifted his hand to gently stroke her hair away from her temple. "I’ll take care of things."

This was going to hurt. Maris knew it, and accepted the pain. Her father had taught her to go into a fight expecting to get hurt; people who didn’t expect the pain were stunned by it, incapacitated and, ultimately, defeated. Wolf Mackenzie had taught his children to win fights.

MacNeil was too close; she was also lying flat on her back, which took away a lot of her leverage. She had to do it anyway. The first blow had to count.

She snapped her left arm up at him, striking for his nose with the heel of her palm.

He moved like lightning, his right forearm coming up to block the blow. Her palm slammed into his arm with enough force to jar her to the teeth. Instantly she recoiled and struck again, this time aiming lower, for his solar plexus. Again that muscular forearm blocked her way, and this time he twisted, catching both of her arms and pinning them to the pillow on each side of her head. With another smooth motion he levered himself atop her, his full weight crushing her into the bed.

The entire thing took three seconds, maybe less. There had been no explosion of movement; anyone watching might not even have realized a brief battle had taken place, so tight had been the movements of attack and response, then counterattack. Her head hadn’t even been unduly jarred. But Maris knew. Not only had she been trained by her father, she had also watched Zane and Chance spar too often to have any doubts. She had just gone up against a highly trained professional—and lost.

His blue eyes were flinty, his expression cold and remote. His grip on her wrists didn’t hurt, but when she tried to move her arms, she found that she couldn’t.

"Now, what in hell was that about?" His voice was still calm, but edged with an icy sharpness.

Then it all fell together. His control, his utter self-confidence, the calmness that seemed so familiar. Of course it was familiar—she saw it constantly, in her brothers. Zane had just that way of speaking, as if he could handle anything that might happen. MacNeil hadn’t hurt her, even when she had definitely tried to hurt him. She couldn’t have expected such concern from a thug hired to kill a horse. The clues were there, even those sexy gray boxers. This was no drifter.

"My God," she blurted. "You’re a cop."

Chapter 3

"Is that why you attacked?" If anything, those blue eyes were even colder.

"No," she said absently, staring up at his face as if she’d never seen a man before. She felt stunned, as if she really hadn’t. Something had just happened, but she wasn’t sure what. It was like the way she’d felt when she first saw him, only more intense, primally exciting. She frowned a little as she tried to pin down the exact thought, or sensation, or whatever it was. His hands tightened on her wrists, drawing her back to the question he’d asked and the answer he wanted, and reluctantly she gathered her thoughts. "I just now realized that you’re a cop. The reason I tried to hit you was because you wouldn’t let me call my family, and I was afraid you might be one of the bad guys."

"So you were going to try to take me out?" He looked furious at the idea. "You have a concussion. How in hell did you expect to fight me? And who taught you those moves, anyway?"

"My father. He taught all of us how to fight. And I could have won, against most men," she said simply. "But you—I know professional training when I see it."

"So the fact that I know how to fight makes you think I’m a cop?"

She could have told him about Zane and Chance, who, even though they weren’t cops, had many of the same characteristics she’d noticed in him. She didn’t, though, because she wasn’t one hundred percent certain their organization or agency or whatever it was was exactly squared away with either the State or Justice Department. Instead, she gave MacNeil a secret little smile. "Actually, it was your shorts."

He was startled out of his control, his blue eyes widening. "My shorts?"

"They aren’t briefs. They’re not white. They’re too sexy."

"And that’s a dead giveaway for being a cop?" he asked incredulously, color staining his cheekbones.

"Drifters don’t wear sexy gray boxers," she pointed out. She didn’t mention the interest she could feel stirring in those sexy gray boxers. Perhaps, under the circumstances, she shouldn’t have mentioned his underwear. Not that his reaction was unexpected, she thought. She was barely clothed, and he wore even less. She could feel the hard, hairy bareness of his legs against hers, the pressure of his hips. Just minutes before, she had thought his touch carefully controlled, so that there was no intimacy, despite his closeness. She didn’t feel that way now. It wasn’t just his arousal; there was something very intimate in the way he held her beneath him, as if their brief battle had startled him out of his careful control and provoked him into a heated, purely male response. She took a deep breath as an unfamiliar excitement made her heart beat faster, made every cell in her body tingle with life. The secret part of her, the wildness that she had always known was there but which no man had ever before managed to touch, shivered in fierce satisfaction at the way he held her.

"Cops don’t necessarily wear them, either."

Her comment about his shorts had definitely disturbed him. She smiled again, her dark eyes half closing in sensual delight as she absorbed the novel sensation of having a hard male body on top of her—an extremely aroused male body. "If you say so. I’ve never seen one undressed before. What kind of cop are you, specifically?"

He was silent for a moment, studying her face. She didn’t know what he saw there, but the set of his mouth eased, and if anything, he settled even more heavily against her. "Specifically, FBI. Special agent."

A federal agent? Startled out of her sensual preoccupation, she gave him a puzzled look. "I didn’t think stealing a horse was a federal crime."

He almost smiled. "It isn’t. Look, if I let go of your hands, are you going to try to kill me again?"

"No. I promise," she said. "Besides, I wasn’t trying to kill you, and even if I had been, I’m not as good as you are, so you don’t have to worry."

"I can’t tell you how reassuring that is," he said dryly, but he released her hands and shifted his position a little, propping himself over her on his forearms. The change forced his hips more firmly against hers, forced her thighs slightly apart to accommodate the pressure. She caught her breath. His interest had grown, to the point that there was no politely ignoring it. But he was ignoring it, not in the least embarrassed by his body’s response to her.

Maris took another deep breath, delighting in the way the simple action rubbed her breasts against the hard, muscled planes of his chest, making her nipples tingle. Oh, God, that felt so good. She would gladly lie in his arms and do nothing more than breathe, if they didn’t have a stolen champion horse stashed somewhere and someone presumably on their trail, trying to kill both them and the stallion.

But they did have a stolen horse hidden away, and a big problem on their hands. She focused her thoughts, and despite the fact that she was lying helplessly pinned beneath him, she fixed him with a dark, penetrating gaze. "So why was a federal special agent mucking out my stables?"

"Trying to find out who’s been killing horses and collecting the insurance money on them—boss." He added the last word in a dry tone, responding to her arrogant claiming of the Solomon Green stables as her own.

She ignored the not-so-subtle teasing, because she’d heard it so often from her family. What she loved, she claimed; it was as simple as that. She drew her head back deeper into the pillow and gave him a frankly skeptical look. "Insurance fraud rates a special agent?"

"It does when it involves kidnapping, crossing state lines and murder."

Murder. So she’d been right: Someone was trying to kill them. Had this someone hit her on the head, or had she gained the goose egg by a more mundane method, such as falling?

"What brought you to Solomon Green?"

"A tip." One corner of his mouth curved slightly. His face was so close to hers that she could see the tiny lines created by the movement, as if he smiled easily. "Law enforcement agencies couldn’t operate without snitches."

"So you knew Sole Pleasure was in danger?" She didn’t like that. Anger began to smolder in her dark eyes. "Why didn’t you tell me? I could have been on guard without causing any suspicion. You didn’t have a right to gamble with his life."

"All of the horses are insured. Any of them could have been targeted. Sole Pleasure should have been their least likely target, because he’s so well-known. His death would raise a lot of questions, attract a lot of attention." He paused, watching her carefully. "And, until last night, you were on my list of suspects."

She absorbed that, her only reaction a slight tightening of her mouth. "How did last night change your mind? What happened?" It was both frustrating and frightening, not being able to remember.

"You came to me for help. You were so angry you could barely speak, and you were scared. You said we had to get Sole Pleasure out of there, and if I didn’t want to help, you’d manage on your own."

"Did I say who was after him?"

He gave a slight shake of his head. "No. Like I said, you were barely speaking. You wouldn’t answer any questions. I thought at the time you were too scared, and once we had the horse safe, I was going to give you a little time to settle down before I started questioning you. Then I noticed how pale and shaky you were, maybe a little shocky from the adrenaline crash. You wanted to go on, but I made you stop here. You conked out as soon as we got in the room."

That reminded her again of both the interesting question of whether she had undressed herself or he had done it for her and his rather irritating assumption that he could make her do anything. She frowned when she realized that he could back up that assumption with action; her current position proved it. He hadn’t hurt her, but physically she was still very much under his control.

Her frown deepened as she grew more annoyed with herself than before. She was doing it again, letting her attention drift. She could keep letting herself get sidetracked by her undeniable attraction to him, or she could keep her mind on the problem at hand. Sole Pleasure’s life, and perhaps her own, depended on doing whatever she could to help this man.

There was no question which was most important.

"The Stonichers," she said slowly. "They’re the only ones who would benefit financially from Sole Pleasure’s death, but they’d make more by syndicating him for stud, so killing him doesn’t make sense."

"That’s another reason I didn’t think he was in danger. I was watching all the other horses. The insurance on them wouldn’t be as much, but neither would their deaths cause much of a stir."

"How did I find you?" she asked. "Did I come to your room? Call you? Did anyone see us, or did you see anyone?" His room was one of ten, tiny but private, in a long, narrow block building the Stonichers had built specifically to house the employees who were transient and had no other quarters, as well as those who needed to be on-site. As the trainer, Maris was important enough to have her own small three-room cottage on the premises. The foaling man, Mr. Wyse, also had his own quarters, an upstairs apartment in the foaling barn, where he watched the mothers-to-be on video monitors. There were always people around; someone had to have seen them.

"I wasn’t in my room. I’d been in the number two barn, checking around, and had just gone out the back door when you rode by on Sole Pleasure. It was dark, so I didn’t think you’d seen me, but you stopped and told me I had to help you. The truck and trailer that brought in that little sorrel mare this afternoon were still sitting there, hooked up, so we loaded Sole Pleasure in and took off. If anyone saw us, I doubt they could even have seen there was a horse in the trailer, much less recognized it as Sole Pleasure."

It was possible, she thought. The number two barn was where the mares who had been sent to the farm for breeding were stabled. Night came early in December, and the horses were already settled down, the workers relaxing or at supper. The truck and trailer didn’t belong to Solomon Green, and everyone knew they had brought in a mare that afternoon, so no one would think anything of the rig leaving, except the driver, who had decided to spend the night and start back at dawn the next day. And Sole Pleasure was exceptionally easy to load; he never made a fuss and, in fact, seemed to enjoy traveling. Loading him wouldn’t have taken more than a minute, and then they would have been on their way.

"I didn’t have a chance to call my family," she said, "but did you call anyone while I was asleep?"

"I went out to a pay phone and let my office know what was going on. They’ll try to run interference for us, but they can’t be too obvious without blowing the operation. We still don’t know who’s involved in the ring—unless you’ve remembered something else in the past few minutes?"

"No," she said regretfully. "My last clear memory is of walking down to the stables yesterday afternoon. I know it was after lunch, but I don’t know the exact time. What little else I remember is just flashes of being angry, and scared, and running to Pleasure’s stall."

"If you remember anything else, even the smallest detail, tell me immediately. By taking the horse, we’ve given them the perfect opportunity to kill him and blame it on us, or at least they’ll see it that way, since they don’t know I’m FBI. They’ll be after us hot and heavy, and I need to know who to expect."

"Where’s Pleasure now?" she asked in alarm, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing. She squirmed under him, trying to slip free of his weight so that she could get up, get dressed and get to the horse. It wasn’t like her to be so lax about a horse’s comfort and security, and though she had watched MacNeil enough to know that he was conscientious with the animals, the final responsibility was hers.

"Calm down. He’s all right." MacNeil caught her hands, once more holding them down on the pillow. "I’ve got him stashed in the woods. No one’s going to find him. I couldn’t make it easy for them. Leaving him in the parking lot, where anyone could get at him, would have made even a fool suspicious. They’re going to have to come to us in order to find him."

She relaxed against the pillows, reassured about Pleasure’s safety. "All right. What are we going to do now?"

He hesitated. "My original plan was to find out what you knew, then put you somewhere safe until we had everything settled."

"Where were you going to put me, in the trailer with Pleasure?" she asked, a slight caustic edge to her voice. "Well, too bad. I can’t tell you what I know, and you need to keep me handy in case I do remember something. You’re stuck with me, MacNeil, and you aren’t putting me anywhere."

"There’s only one place I’d like to put you," he said slowly. "And I already have you there."

Chapter 4

It wasn’t a surprise, given all the evidence at hand.

Pure male possessiveness was in Alex MacNeil’s attitude, in every line of his body, staring plainly down at her from those sharp blue eyes.

Maris knew she wasn’t mistaken about that look. She had grown up seeing it in her father’s eyes every time he looked at her mother, seen the way he stood so close to her, touched her, a subtle alertness in every muscle of his body. She had also seen it innumerable times in her five brothers, first with their girlfriends and later, for four of them, with their wives. It was a look of desire, heated and potent.

It was both scary and exhilarating, startling her, and yet at the same time it was as if she had known, from the moment she first saw him, that there was something between them and eventually she would have to deal with it.

That was why she’d been at such pains to avoid him, not wanting the complication of an involvement with him, or having to endure the resultant gossip among the other employees. She had dated, some, but she had instinctively shied away whenever a boy or man showed signs of becoming too involved, possessive. She’d never had much time or patience for anything that interfered with her concentration on her horses and her career, nor had she ever wanted to let anyone that close to her.

She had a strong private core that she’d never let anyone touch, except for her family. It seemed to be a Mackenzie trait, the ability to be alone and be perfectly content, and even though all her brothers except Chance had eventually married and were frighteningly in love with their wives, they had married because they were in love. Maris had always been content to wait until that once-in-a-lifetime love happened to her, too, rather than waste time by flinging herself without thought into a brief affair with any man who just happened to have the right physical chemistry with her.

The chemistry was there with MacNeil, all right. The proof of it, on his part, was pressing urgently against the soft notch of her legs, tempting her to open her thighs wider and allow herself to feel that rigid length full against her loins. The fact that she wanted to do so was proof of the right chemistry on her part. She should move away, she knew she should, but she didn’t. There wasn’t a cell in her body that wanted to move, unless it was closer into his embrace.

She stared up into his beard-stubbled face, into blue eyes that were hard and darkened by sharp desire, a desire he was ruthlessly containing. Her own eyes were dark, bottomless pools as she met that sharp gaze. "The question is," she said slowly, "what are you going to do about it?"

"Not very damn much," he muttered, shifting restlessly against her. His jaw tightened at the sensations resulting from that movement, and his breath sighed out between his teeth. "You have a concussion. You have a killer headache. We have an unknown number of unknown people looking for us, so I have to keep my mind on the situation, instead of thinking about getting into your little panties. And even if you said yes, damn it, I’d have to say no, because the concussion could be causing mental impairment!" The last sentence was raw with frustration, ground out as if every word hurt him.

She lay very still beneath him, though her instinct was to part her thighs and cradle him against her, pulling him into her soft heat. Her eyes went as dark as night, softening, something mysterious and eternal moving there. "My headache is better." Her voice was low, her gaze drawing him in. "And I’m not mentally impaired."

"Oh, God," he groaned, resting his forehead against hers and closing his eyes. "Two out of four."

Maris moved her hands, and he immediately freed them. She laid her palms against his shoulders, and he tensed, waiting for her to push him away, knowing it was for the best but dreading the loss of contact. She didn’t push. Instead, she curved her hands over the powerful muscles that cushioned the balls of his shoulder joints, trailed her fingers over the curve of his collarbone and finally flattened her hands against the hard planes of his chest. His crisp black chest hair tickled her palms. His tiny flat nipples hardened to pinpoints, intriguing her. His heartbeat was hard and strong, throbbing beneath her touch.