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Could she dash up to the house and shower? So she wouldn’t smell like horse if she was close to the man again? Was she mad? Attracted to a man like that? And, anyway, she couldn’t leave the party now.
Not really, not if Mum might need her.
Or Billy.
Where was Billy?
The ache that rarely went away, tucked into a corner of her heart—the ache that was Billy, gentle, sensitive, slow-to-develop Billy—reminded her of the problems that lay ahead.
Face troubles when they come, girl, she remembered her father telling her, and although he always took the words a little too literally, she felt somehow comforted.
Ibrahim had paused by a half-open door and was talking quietly to the inquisitive gelding who’d poked his head out of his stall. As far as Kate could tell, the visitor wasn’t speaking English but the horse seemed to understand him anyway and was nodding and holding his head sideways for a hard rub.
‘Shamus is Tippy’s—Dancing Tiptoes’s—older brother—full brother, doing well in local two-year-olds’ races.’
The young horse shifted his attention to Kate’s mother and nuzzled her neck as she explained.
‘You’ve tried him in the city?’ asked one of the entourage—the taller one who’d failed to hide his disdain.
Sally Andrews shook her head.
‘Since …’
She faltered and Kate, who knew exactly how huge a strain this meeting was on her mother, stepped in.
‘Since my father died two months ago, my mother hasn’t wanted to travel far,’ she said, speaking directly to the man who’d asked the question, meeting the challenge in his eyes that seemed to peer right into her soul. ‘And logistically it’s difficult. One of our stable hands was killed in the same accident, so we’re short-handed even with me here.’
The questioner’s eyes, dark as obsidian, studied her intently.
Suspiciously?
She shook off the tremor of unease his look had caused and concentrated on the main man—Ibrahim.
‘So, should I purchase Dancing Tiptoes and wish him to run in the best races, I will have to find another trainer?’ Ibrahim asked.
He was standing so close to Sally he must have seen her reaction, and noticed Kate reach out to steady her mother.
Obsidian Eyes certainly had; he missed nothing.
Which might explain, Kate decided, why he, of all the entourage, made her feel so uncomfortable.
‘Come and meet him,’ she said, determined to ignore the stranger. ‘There’s no point in discussing training arrangements if you don’t like the look of him.’
But who wouldn’t? she thought, and her gut clenched as the ramifications of losing Tippy spun in her head.
It was inevitable that Billy would be down in the paddock with Tippy, running alongside him as if they were a pair of the same species.
‘My son, Billy,’ Sally said, and Ibrahim nodded.
Kate, whose eyes had gone to Ibrahim’s face as soon as she saw Billy in the paddock, realised that the man had seen and understood a difference in Billy—seen, understood and accepted! An empathetic man!
Bother the man who was making her uncomfortable, Ibrahim was the boss. It was he who’d decide.
Sally’s whistle had brought Tippy to the fence, Billy following more slowly, his natural caution with strangers holding him back.
Or did he understand more about Tippy’s future than Kate and Sally realised?
Sally had thrust her hand into the capacious pockets of her trousers, but Ibrahim was faster, producing from the pocket in his immaculate pinstriped suit a small, rosy apple.
‘I may?’ he said to Sally, who nodded and tucked the sugar lumps back into her pocket.
Tippy studied the stranger almost as warily as Billy had, then threw his head back and snorted before lowering it to lip the apple delicately off the man’s hand.
‘He likes apples best of all.’ Billy had come gradually closer and now stood beside the horse, his too-thin face radiating the love he felt for the animal.
‘I do, too,’ Ibrahim said. ‘Where I live it is hard to grow apples, so when I come to your country I eat as many as possible.’
‘Where is it that you can’t grow apples?’
‘A place called Amberach, far across the sea. A very small place compared to Australia.’
‘Did you come here in a plane?’
Kate was aware of her mother’s tension returning. Once involved in a conversation, Billy could talk for hours. Should they cut him off?
She glanced at Ibrahim, who showed no sign of impatience—no sign of anything except, she rather thought, simple kindness.
‘Yes, I came on a plane.’
‘Next to horses I like planes best. Dad always said one day I could go on a plane with the horses, but Dad died, you know.’
‘Yes, I did know that,’ Ibrahim said gently, while Kate held her breath.
Please, don’t offer him a plane ride, especially if you don’t mean it.
But Ibrahim’s attention was back on the horse—or was he diverting Billy?
‘Would you run him again for me?’ Ibrahim asked, and Billy whistled to Tippy and the pair took off, Billy understanding what was needed and circling in the middle while Tippy raced around the paddock, his delight in movement lending wings to his feet.
‘A truly beautiful sight,’ Ibrahim murmured. He turned to one of his men—not the tall, disdainful one. ‘He is everything you said he was.’
The man nodded.
‘Would you like a cool drink or a cup of tea or coffee?’ Kate offered, trying to hide the excitement she was feeling, although she knew her mother would be more apprehensive than excited.
Selling Tippy was one thing—the money from the sale would save the stables—but keeping him to train—her mother’s long-held dream—was quite another.
‘First we might walk around a little, see the other horses, the training track and the hill run I’ve heard about. Dancing Tiptoes was bred here—the mare is here?’ Ibrahim replied.
‘In foal again, and with the other mares,’ Sally told him. ‘When they’re pregnant they seem to like the company. We’ll walk this way.’
She led the party, Ibrahim close behind her, Kate and the entourage bringing up the rear.
‘You’d already seen the horse?’ she said to the man beside her—the one to whom Ibrahim had turned earlier.
‘I was at your father’s funeral, then came back here with others,’ he said quietly. ‘I know it is late to be offering condolences but I am sorry for your loss.’
Kate thanked him and lagged behind, caught off guard by his sudden kindness. She remembered little of that terrible day beyond a blur of cars and people and a need to be strong for both her mother and Billy, yet being uselessly emotional all day.
In fact, it had been Billy who’d been strong for her, and for their mother.
Maybe he would understand more than they thought if Tippy was sold and moved to another trainer. Maybe he’d transfer his love to a new foal—
‘Ka-a-a-a-te!’
Her mother’s anguished cry brought her out of her reverie. Looking up, she realised the entourage was now some way ahead of her. But instinct had her running down towards the brood mares’ paddock, pushing through the phalanx of minders, seeing the taller man, eyes nearly swollen shut, red welts appearing on his face, pulling at his tie, his collar, trying to say something that sounded like ‘knife’.
‘He wants a knife,’ one of the men said, while Kate grabbed the man, trying to ease him to the ground, issuing orders as she did it.
‘Call an ambulance—emergency number is triple zero here—and you …’ she pointed to the closest ‘… run up to the stables and get the first-aid box. One of the stable hands will find it for you.’
The stricken man was still struggling to talk, pointing at his throat and making gargling noises.
‘What’s his name?’ she asked Ibrahim, who was looking so pale Kate feared she’d have two patients.
‘Fareed,’ Ibrahim whispered.
‘Don’t worry, he’ll be all right,’ Kate assured the older man, before turning back to her patient.
‘Okay, Fareed, I need you to relax. Lie right back, you’ll be all right.’
She’d fallen to her knees beside him as she spoke, straightening him out on the ground as best she could when he was still struggling, pushing at her and trying to talk.
‘Lie still, you big lunk,’ she yelled, and apparently shocked him into immobility. Seizing her chance, she tilted back his head in case CPR became necessary, automatically feeling for a pulse, counting his breaths, more gasps than breaths.
‘He was waving his hands then started gasping,’ Sally was explaining, but Kate had already found the tiny sting the bee had left behind, barely visible on the lobe of the man’s right ear.
‘It’s anaphylactic shock,’ she said as she pulled the sting out and felt in the man’s pockets for a pen. ‘Did any of you know he had allergies? That he was allergic to bee stings?’
The men looked blankly at her but there was no time to explain.
Tilting the patient’s head farther back, she leaned forward, refusing to even consider the lips she was about to touch as anything other than an anonymous patient’s. Although as she closed her mouth over his, breathing air into his lungs, trying to force it in through a passage she knew would be closing more and more, a shiver of something she couldn’t understand ran down her spine.
Between breaths she reassured her patient, who was nearly comatose but still struggling, though feebly, against her.
It was Billy who brought the first-aid kit, and Kate, knowing an ambulance would take at least another twenty minutes to reach the property, didn’t hesitate.
Opening the big case, she searched for the epinephrine injection she’d told her father to keep there. Either he hadn’t bothered or it had been used, emptied and not replaced. She found a scalpel, still in its sterile wrapping, and a small roll of plastic tubing—heaven only knew its real use. Using scissors, she cut a small piece then pulled on gloves.
The skin on the man’s neck was smooth and tanned, and her hand hesitated for a fraction of a second but she knew what had to be done.
She’d drawn the scalpel from its sheath and moved her hand towards that smooth, tanned skin, when one of the entourage stepped forward and, to her astonishment, pulled out a gun.
A small gun, but no less deadly than a big one would be, of that she was sure.
He muttered something at her in his own language and Kate turned to Ibrahim.
‘His throat has swollen and he can’t breathe—I need to make a hole and breathe into it for him until he can manage on his own. I am a doctor, I can do this.’
Ibrahim nodded and apparently translated but the gun didn’t disappear back to wherever it had come from.
So if I do this wrong, he shoots me? Kate wondered in the distant part of her brain not focused on the job.
Feeling carefully, she found the space between his thyroid cartilage and the cricoid cartilage. The scalpel blade bit cleanly, a cut barely half an inch deep, and she slipped her finger into it to open it, before sliding the tube into place.
Ignoring the muttering going on around her and the distant yowling of an ambulance, she bent low and breathed into the tube. Two quick breaths, pause, another breath, pause …
The man’s chest was rising so she’d got the tube in successfully, but he needed treatment—epinephrine to combat the shock, hospitalisation for at least twenty-four hours, and minor surgery to repair the gash she’d made in his throat.
Somehow she didn’t think she’d have to worry about Billy missing Tippy. These people would want nothing more to do with the Andrews family.
The ambos, once they’d given the patient an epinephrine injection in his thigh, were audibly impressed by her efforts.
‘Learnt about it, of course,’ one said, ‘but never had to do it.’
‘I’m an ER doctor,’ Kate explained, as they expertly attached monitors to their patient, then lifted him onto the stretcher. ‘Though I’ve only had to do it once before so I was a bit shaky.’
‘ER doc?’ the second man said, when he’d strapped Fareed onto the stretcher. ‘Don’t suppose you’d come with us—sit with him just in case.’
‘I think that would be an excellent idea,’ Ibrahim said, and to emphasise the point he actually nodded towards the man who’d held the gun.
Or maybe that was her imagination running riot after the little bit of drama!
Whatever! Someone would have to sit with him to hold the plastic tube in place and it might as well be her. She climbed into the back of the ambulance beside Fareed, who was breathing, somewhat raspily, through the hole in his neck. His eyes opened, the drug taking almost immediate effect, and his hand lifted to feel his neck.
Kate caught the hand before he could dislodge the tube, and held it in hers so it could do no harm. It was a strong hand, with long, lean fingers that fought against her hold—a manly hand …
She put the distraction down to her own shock—and disappointment.
‘You’ve suffered anaphylactic shock. You’ve got a tube in your throat so you can breathe and you’ve had an injection of epinephrine, which will combat the shock. Now you know you’re allergic to bee stings, you should carry a pen with the drug in it wherever you go.’
The disdain she’d read in his eyes earlier returned, so blatant she wanted to turn away.
And let him get away with it?
‘Not that I expect gratitude or anything for saving your life, but a smile wouldn’t hurt! ’
Fortunately, before she could let off any more steam, which she knew was nothing more than a release of her own tension, they drew up at the hospital.
