The Stable Affair

by Jessica Andersen

  He backed smoothly away, pretending not to notice her sudden flush. Apparently his fabled charm hadn’t worn completely thin after all. That was reassuring. “And the second name?”

  “Uh, yeah. Um, I mean yes. As I said, a show horse has a show name, but usually that’s something long and formal so most of them have barn names that are used in everyday conversation.”

  “Paladin, Prince Charming, Windwalker.” Dante read off the names as he wandered down the aisle. “Whoever named these poor beasts was just as bad as my parents! Where is Romeo?”

  Sarah looked chagrined. “In my own defense, these horses have all been here for years. I named them when I was in my teens.” Her voice dropped so low he barely heard her add, “Tilly sold Romeo a few years ago. I’m told he’s very happy with his new owner, who changed his name to Pirate.”

  He laughed, liking the way she ducked her head and looked at him sideways when she was embarrassed. “What would you name a horse for me?”

  “That’s too easy. Inferno, or maybe The Divine Comedy.” At his wince she giggled before sobering again. “We should be moving on. I have a few to ride today, so we can talk while I get them ready.”

  Intent on remembering which of the new horses she was to ride and what equipment they’d need, Sarah brushed against Dante again on her way to the tack room. Little swirls of electricity zipped up and down her arm where it had touched his and she had to force herself not to yank away from him as she had several times already that day.

  Heat bloomed low in her belly and her nipples crinkled in anticipation. What was wrong with her? She had never been one to be quickly attracted to a man. Her relationship with Jay had developed slowly over the months they had worked together and even then their lovemaking had been more friendly than electric.

  She glanced obliquely at Dante, wondering if he’d felt it too, but the photographer was staring off at a young horse cavorting in a nearby paddock and was seemingly unaffected by her casual touch. Oh, well. It wasn’t his problem her nerve endings all fired simultaneously every time he came near. It had just been so damn long since she’d felt a man’s arms around her that she was tempted to fling herself at him, just to see what would happen.

  He’d probably just look at her with that shuttered look she had noticed every now and then and ask if this was some sort of initiation ritual for new members of the horse community.

  To guard against temptation, Sarah gave Dante a wide berth when she returned with Larth’s tack and was careful to stay far away from him as she readied the chestnut gelding.

  She schooled two young hunters and a jumper over practice obstacles in the ring and warned the busily snapping photographer that he would need to catch the jumping horse at precisely the top of its arc, when its knees were tucked artfully. Too many people missed that critical moment and ended up with unmarketable photographs.

  As Sarah walked her final mount, cooling it from its exertions, Dante made ready to leave.

  “I can’t thank you enough for your help. I can see I still have a lot to learn, though. Can I call you or come back if I have any more questions?”

  “Sure,” she agreed casually, wondering whether he wanted an excuse to call her for more personal reasons. “I’ll be here.”

  His arm brushed against hers again as they walked side by side with the black horse trailing obediently behind. Her stomach started to jitter with unfamiliar longings and the rational part of her tried to remember Jay. He wasn’t even two years dead, what right did she have to want another man? Besides, there was far too much uncertainty in her life for her to bring another person into the mix.

  They walked to Dante’s car and she had to smile. “What is this, the family truckster?” She eyed the sturdy dark gray Wagoneer with amusement. Somehow she hadn’t seen him as a used Jeep kind of guy.

  “No, it’s my mobile photography setup. It takes a lot of room to stow all that gear. I didn’t pick it out though, it was my sister’s.” Sarah was peering through the windows to take in the dazzling array of equipment, so she missed the look of pain that crossed Dante’s face.

  They exchanged a few more pleasantries until Sarah realized they were lingering, both delaying the moment when he would leave. She stuttered to a halt, suddenly unsure. Did she want to ask him out? Did he want to ask her out? What would she do if he did?

  They were standing in the visitors’ lot staring at each other, and she hoped fervently that nobody was watching from the barns. Bob’s boys never let her live anything down; they were still picking on her for dating little Tommy Merill a decade ago when she was nineteen.

  “Well, ‘bye!” she blurted out abruptly and spun on her heel, yanking the black colt to follow her. The horse snorted in protest, letting her know he’d been perfectly happy dozing.

  “Wait!” Dante called. He’d learned nothing that day other than basic horsemanship and show politics, which he’d found surprisingly fascinating. For moments here and there he had even forgotten why he was with Sarah, and that was unacceptable. A sharp twist of guilt punished him for his lapse. He was here to do a job, to have his revenge. “Can I buy you dinner to thank you for your time?”

  She hesitated as if she were considering the invitation, but the black horse she was holding chose that moment to misbehave. He snorted at a patch of early tulips as if he expected them to reach out and grab at his ankle, and danced in a wide circle around Sarah, as light on his feet as any ballerina. Dante watched in admiration as the colt arched his long neck and shook his triangular head with the vigor of youth.

  Sarah blessed the distraction that gave her a few moments to think before shouting the unqualified “Yes!” that her body was demanding. She could have brought Modi under control easily with a yank and a snarl, but instead she let him play, ducking as aluminum-shod hooves flashed past her face. “I should really go put him away now. I’ll see you again, I’m sure.”

  Dante grimaced wryly as he watched her walk away. He knew an evasion when he saw one. No matter, his persistence with women was as legendary as his charm and he owed Susan and her orphaned daughter.

  “See you again? You can bet on it, Sarah Taylor.”

  Chapter Three

  “No more stalling,” Sarah said as she draped Noble’s schooling bridle over a hook. Her horse had been out of work ever since the accident; first because of his injuries, then because Sarah had been too caught up in the drama of court and hospital review boards to spare him time, and lately because she was afraid he had been hopelessly crippled.

  Noble looked at her reproachfully as if to say, “I’m not the one who’s been stalling”, and she patted him, brushing his dark forelock away from the soft white of his face. When he saw his saddle, he chuckled in pleasure and nodded his head enthusiastically.

  They circled the practice ring a few times at the walk with Sarah using her voice, rein, and leg to remind her friend of the basics. She squeezed him to a trot and was reassured at the rhythmic stride, flowing with no sign of lameness or stiffness beyond what she expected from an older horse just coming off a long layup.

  Sitting on his broad back for the first time in almost two years, Sarah was reminded of her excitement at the prospect of riding Noble at the big Washington International horse show. Sadly they had made it only partway before the accident. She murmured, “I couldn’t save Jay but I saved you, didn’t I?”

  Noble snorted and shied at a small rock. Sarah patted his glistening neck and imagined that they were once again strutting the springy turf of a Grand Prix field. The names of Sarah Taylor and Almost Noble had once meant something in the world of show jumping. “Just you wait and see,” she promised, “We’ll be back there this fall.”

  Sarah checked her watch often and brought him down to a walk after only ten minutes. She slipped off his broad back and he laid his ears back, snapping at her and intentionally missing by a mile.

  “Yeah, you old fake. I know you’re still ready to go, but we’ve got to bring those muscles back slow or
you’ll be on stall rest again.” She turned to lead him out of the ring, and was brought up by the sight of Tilda and Bob leaning on the fence watching her. She wondered if they knew what an intimate picture they made, leaning into each other as the spring sun burned the mist off the field behind them.

  “Well?” She was a little afraid of the answer. Had he felt sound to her because she so wanted him to be sound?

  “He looks good, little girl,” Bob said, and the tension she hadn’t know was there relaxed in her shoulders. The barn manager ran his hand down Noble’s neck and between his front legs. “Stayed pretty cool, too. You judged that workout well. We’ll see how far he can go.”

  “He’ll go all the way,” Sarah predicted. “He’ll be good as he ever was by the end of this fall. If all goes well, we’ll show in the North Shore Classic as a sort of comeback. Won’t that be fun?”

  Tilda shook her head cautiously. “I don’t know, Sarah. Isn’t that a little ambitious? It’s only six months away. You have nothing to prove to anyone. Why take any chances with Noble’s safety or your own?”

  Pleasure suddenly curdled into resentment, and Sarah snarled at her aunt’s lack of enthusiasm. “Yeah, I guess I’m good at taking chances with other people’s safety, aren’t I? Jay and Susan can attest to that. Oh! No they can’t, they’re dead.” Madder at herself than Tilda, Sarah stalked to the barn, followed by Almost Noble who would follow her anywhere he was allowed.

  Bob held Tilda back from joining the parade. “No, let her be. It’s time she got it out of her system and us cooing over her every time she gets upset isn’t going to help.”

  Tilda nodded and forced herself to return to her manager’s side. The warmth from his body relaxed her and she stayed there next to Bob as they watched the spring crop of foals play down by the old willow tree.

  “I just wish she’d let us help her.”

  Bob nodded at Tilda’s words and tipped the grubby cap back on his head. “I know you do, Matilda. When she’s ready, she’ll ask for help. She’s never been a stupid child.”

  Sarah and Tilda circled warily around each other for the remainder of the day until the younger woman finally locked herself in her bedroom and kicked the wall a few times to vent some frustration. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and dropped her aching head in her hands.

  In the quiet solitude of the small room, Sarah could admit that she wasn’t angry with anybody but herself. She’d been back at the farm for almost a week now and wasn’t any closer to the truth than she had been in Boston. She knew she hadn’t made any mistake at the lab; she just lacked the data to prove that to the others.

  “So no more stalling,” she said, unconsciously echoing her earlier words to Almost Noble. But where to begin?

  She glanced at Shelly’s computer, a remnant from the days when Tilda’s daughter had lived at the farm during college. Well then, she’d start at the beginning and the end of it all—Boston General’s Genetic Testing Unit.

  The ancient machine booted up slowly, but it was fitted with an adequate modem and Sarah used it to painstakingly hack her way into Boston General’s network and slide through a back door into the GTU’s database. She figured her ex-employer would’ve changed her passwords but left her interlocking files intact for the others to use.

  She was right about that, and managed to slip through a side door into the head tech’s account and use it to query her own. Matt wouldn’t mind her using his password; he’d been one of the few to stand up for her during the hearings that followed Susan’s death.

  Sarah watched the ancient dot matrix printer burp to life and start disgorging reams of paper as her old files were downloaded to Shelly’s dinosaur of a computer. She toasted her absent friend with a half-empty soda glass. “Thanks for the help, Matthew.”

  Some thirty miles from Pruitt Farm, a light began to blink on a multi-line phone. There was no harsh buzz because The Doctor preferred things quiet and subdued. He pressed the button with one freshly manicured fingertip. “Yes?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but remember a few months ago when you told me to keep an eye out for somebody accessing those frozen files?” The voice on the speaker was tinny and grated on his ears.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that account was just queried by an external source.”

  “Did she get in?” He sounded only mildly interested, but his index finger began to tap a staccato rhythm on the polished desktop.

  “Yes, sir. The user was in and out before the system notified me. She used Bender’s account for access. Is that a problem?”

  The finger drummed slightly faster but The Doctor’s voice remained calm. “No, no. No problem. Thank you for informing me, you can move the red flagged files to my personal account now and delete the rest.”

  He disconnected the speaker and lifted the handset while his tapered fingers performed a rapid dance on the telephone keypad.

  “Hey. It’s me.” His voice was harsher—meaner than it had been when he spoke to the computer systems tech. “Sarah Taylor just downloaded her files off the BoGen network.”

  He paused and the finger resumed its tapping at a slower, more deliberate pace. “No, she didn’t get those records, they’re all in the back room. All she got was the stuff we cleaned up for the investigation, but if she’s started nosing around it could be dangerous. You’ll see to it? No, just scare her a bit for now and check through the stuff she brought to the farm that might have belonged to Fontaine. He has to have hidden those notes somewhere. Got it? Good.”

  The Doctor disconnected and sat for a moment, a small, cruel smile lifting the corners of his thin lips.

  Pretty Sarah Taylor rode bareback and bridleless across an open field, unbound hair streaming behind her to mingle with that of the white horse beneath her. The cadence of the animal’s hooves matched the beat of Dante’s heart and he wiped damp palms against the rough cotton of his pants as the gloriously naked woman and her horse circled the field once, twice, and again before turning toward him.

  They floated effortlessly over a low fieldstone wall and seemed not to touch the ground, moving as one until an unseen cue from Sarah brought the horse drifting to a halt nearby. Dante stepped forward. He needed to feel her, to know that she was real, but the horse danced just out of his reach and Sarah watched him from above with laughing blue green eyes.

  He could feel great heat radiating from the horse’s sweaty hide and could smell the animal’s breath on the back of his neck as he darted close enough to touch the woman’s bare calf. The horse reared high, clawing at the air as if it might touch the very clouds and Sarah rose with him, her long legs wrapped around his barrel, her slender arms tangled in his mane.

  Her mocking eyes challenged Dante from atop the pawing animal and he stepped in under the dancing hooves to pull her from the creature’s back and into his own arms. Sweat dampened her inner thighs and slicked the rise of her breasts and her red-gold hair clung to both of them as Dante allowed her to slide down the length of his body with torturous friction until her eyes were level with his and her toes dangled a few inches above the ground.

  Eyes sparkling with mischief, she leaned in close with her lips pursed to whisper sweet words in his ear. She took a shallow breath that pressed the ripe globes of her breasts closer to his chest-

  And screamed.

  “Jesus!” Dante sat bolt upright in bed, convinced that Satan’s minions had finally gotten around to collecting him. He was sweating and shaking and horribly aroused and the screaming went on and on until he could feel it under his skin.

  He looked around for Sarah and the horse but, of course, they weren’t there. He was in his bed in the rented house with the cracked ceilings and now whoever it was had stopped screaming and was sobbing brokenly, horribly. Dante’s delicious erection deflated with a thud as he figured out who was making all the noise.

  “Ellie!” He was out the door and into her bedroom in an instant, grateful that he’d remembered to wear boxers to bed
for a change.

  The little room where she slept had finally begun to look like a child’s home, with cheerful crayon drawings tacked to the drab walls and small families of beanbag animals populating every available space. Ellie herself was curled into a tiny knot at the very top of the narrow bed, crying in her sleep.

  “Ellie-belly, wake up.” Even as he scooped the little girl into his arms, Dante had to close his eyes against the pain her sobbing brought. “Come on, Honey, wake up. It was only a bad dream.” Only it wasn’t, the nightmare had really happened.

  The child sniffled and opened her eyes a crack. “Unc’ Danny?”

  He settled himself against the headboard and cradled her in his lap, pulling the covers up around both of them as the early May chill finished dispelling the last lingering traces of his dream, which was in its own way a nightmare as well.

  “Yes, Pumpkin, I’m here. I’m here.” He soothed her mindlessly, a talent he hadn’t realized he possessed until a few months ago when he got the telegram calling him home for Susan’s funeral.

  “Where’s Mommy?” The plaintive question nearly broke his heart. He’d thought the time of nightmares and questions was past. It had been weeks since she’d slept with him, longer since she’d asked about her mother, and Dante felt himself struggling with the answer.

  “She’s here, Sweetie. She’s right here with us, right now. You can’t see her but she is. She’s going to be with you every second of every day, watching to make sure you’re doing okay.” The little girl watched him with sleepy blue eyes the same shade as his own.

  “Why can’t I see her, Uncle Danny?” Ellie yawned as she asked this, apparently content to be lulled back to sleep by the rumble of his words beneath her sweaty cheek.