Mr. Miracle

“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.