The Stable Affair

by Jessica Andersen

  Dante knew for a fact it had been something all right, something that had scared the heck out of her. Was it something to do with Susan?

  He didn’t want to look too closely at his own reaction when Sarah had suddenly bolted from the restaurant. His first response had been to protect her. Only after the incident was long over had he belatedly realized that it might be pertinent to his investigation.

  Had Sarah seen one of her coconspirators? Had she recognized Ellie the other day and was even now setting a trap for him? Had the hunter become the hunted? Perhaps.

  He wrestled with these questions the entire ride back to the hotel when he should have been quizzing her on who she’d seen, why she’d panicked. When he walked her to her room, he admitted to himself that maybe he didn’t really want to know the answers any more.

  Alone in her drab little hotel room, Sarah finally gave herself permission to fall apart and shake and cry all she needed to in reaction, but surprisingly the desire had passed. In its wake, all she felt was puzzlement and a slow burning anger.

  “Why now?” She voiced the question in the direction of the wall over her lumpy rented bed, but the oil painting of a jaundiced-looking child in rompers picking strangely colored flowers did not have an answer for her. She paced around the small room, automatically setting out her show clothes for the next day while she thought out loud.

  “Why watch me now? The trials are over, I’ve been fired from the lab and I’ve got a new job. I’m out of it. Why do they still care about me?”

  Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe it was just her overactive, paranoid imagination at work. Maybe that guy was just some poor bald man from Newcastle, New York with two-point-five bald kids, a plump wife and a hairless dog.

  Sarah relaxed marginally at that, once again trying to convince herself that there were no dark forces at work in her life—she was just nuts like Gordon said.

  As she stripped out of her clothing and shrugged into an overlarge T-shirt, her mind drifted to remembering the evening as it had been before she saw the bald man. “I’m beginning to like that Devers guy,” she told her toothbrush after she rinsed. “He tells good stories and didn’t seem to mind when I lost my marbles.” And he has great dimples and the back of my neck gets hot when he’s near, she didn’t say out loud, because saying things out loud makes them real.

  She slid between the gritty sheets and tried not to think of the stories her bed could tell. When she reached for the lamp, her gaze fell on the small stack of paperbacks on the table. “That’s funny—I could swear I left the mystery I was reading on the top of the pile.”

  She was sliding down the ravine, broken guardrail ripping her jeans, branches slashing at her bare arms and unprotected face as she scrambled toward the trailer. Away from Jay.

  The aluminum two-horse lay on its side, roof staved in. The pressure treated floor had splintered and red blood leaked from the lowest corner. As Sarah drew nearer she could hear Noble taking shallow, panting breaths and giving the occasional low moan while his life bled into the thick mat of pine needles on which the trailer lay.

  Sarah took a deep breath and steeled herself, reaching to work the latch of a battered trailer door. She opened it and peered in-

  To see herself in her office at the lab, sitting across the desk from a thin, dark-haired woman. Suddenly Sarah was sitting at the desk, feeling the familiar give of her ergonomically designed chair and looking into her friend’s eyes.

  “So my brother’s going to be back in town one of these days and I really want you to meet him.” Susan giggled, “He’s cute and he’s got a great personality.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Don’t they all? Let’s get this over with so we can go to lunch, ’kay?” She spun her nifty chair around to face her lab computer and pulled up the Huntington’s Disease test results for Susan St. Pierre: CAG repeats sized eight and sixty-three. An expanded allele. Susan was positive for the Huntington’s chromosome and would die before her time, mind and body held prisoner by the relentless neurodegeneration.

  Sarah’s throat closed, locked tight against the utterance of the words: a death sentence to be imposed on the vital young mother. She spun back around in her chair-

  To look into the wide eyes of a man, not much more than a boy, who was tugging at her and trying to make her look at the pile of clothes that lay on the road in front of a battered station wagon.

  “I can’t deal with the luggage right now, the trailer’s down there in the ditch. Where’s Jay? Down there already? Did he take that phone with him to call a tow truck and the vet? You know, I always hated that thing, he likes to wave it around when he’s making a point…” She trailed off as the boy continued to pull at her good arm, the one that wasn’t covered with blood.

  “Lady, the man…” The boy led her around the crumpled nose of her Ford. She noted a big hole in the windshield on the driver’s side, and remembered that Jay hadn’t been in the cab of the truck when she regained consciousness. Remembered that he never wore his seat belt. Pressure on her good arm drew her to the pile of clothing in the road.

  “I told you I can’t deal with the bags right now…” But wasn’t that the striped polo shirt Jay had been wearing?

  She sank to her knees on the bloody pavement and crouched down beside the lifeless huddle that had been Jay Fontaine. Shaking his shoulder tentatively, she tried to wake him up, mindful that he didn’t like it when she roused him without good reason. “Jay honey, get up, you’re scaring me. I need your help with Noble, the trailer’s down there somewhere in a ditch. Come on, wake up!”

  A squeal of tires nearby and the far-off wail of sirens drew her attention, and she looked up-

  To face the grim-visaged members of the Review Board. Jay’s former partner Gordon sat ranged with them, his careful blond hair swept back from his high forehead, his predatory eyes glinting at her from atop his beak. Sarah felt the presence of the lawyer at her elbow. She couldn’t speak; her mind was numbed by the tranquilizers Gordon had given her to help her make it through the endless days of the inquiry.

  “So we are agreed that the hospital will settle with the estate of Susan St. Pierre, to be reimbursed by the Genetic Testing Unit over the next two years.” Gordon shuffled through his papers and pulled out one to hand to the head of the panel. “For our part we shall put Miss Taylor on an indefinite leave of absence without pay. Obviously she was more shaken up than we realized by the death of Dr. Fontaine last year.”

  He leaned in close and patted Sarah’s hand. She lacked the energy to recoil in horror at his dry, avian touch. “Because we all know, my dear, that you aren’t usually so careless.” His pale, almost lidless eyes bored into hers-

  To become brown, terrified ones. Ignoring the blood that smeared her torn clothes as she lowered herself into the trailer, Sarah found again that her right arm wasn’t working quite right. Noble lay on the centerboard of the trailer, legs askew, head held up awkwardly by the trailer tie. He looked at Sarah and said in Jay’s voice, “You aren’t usually so careless… so careless… careless… careless.”

  Sarah shrieked once, a high, thin cry that was cut off abruptly like that of a bird in mid-trill pounced on by a cat. She came half-awake clutching her shoulder, which roared with pain as it hadn’t done on the day of the accident. She sobbed brokenly, not really sure where she was, but very sure that something terrible had happened.

  From far away she heard a crash and a curse and was grateful for the strong male arms that suddenly held her and the low voice that soothed her as she swam up from the murky, clinging waters of her dream. Jay’s voice still echoed in her ears and his face was so clear in her mind’s eye that she knew it must be his arms holding her. His death had been nothing more than a nightmare.

  She felt his dear fingers push the sweaty hair from her brow; his smooth lips touch her temple as he continued to assure her that it had just been a dream, that everything was fine now. When his lips brushed her tear-streaked cheek, Sarah turned blindly to meet th
em, needing the familiar reassurance of his kiss.

  Dante had been entangled in dreams of his own when Ellie’s screams had wakened him and he had yet again stumbled his way to her bed to soothe the little girl’s anguish.

  His dreams had been warm, aching images of white skin and red-gold hair, a mélange of arms and legs and hooves all tangled together in a dizzyingly erotic dance. So when he pulled the little girl against his chest to kiss her tears away, he was only momentarily surprised to find himself holding a woman.

  Caught vulnerable in that place between sleeping and waking, Dante soothed the woman as he would have the little girl, cuddling her and using his voice to chase the demons away. Her curves fit exactly against his body, but of course they would, wouldn’t they? This was his dream so it was only fair that his fantasy woman nestled up against him just right.

  When he kissed her forehead as he would Ellie’s, the texture of the woman’s skin was as pure and smooth as he’d known it would be. When he pressed his lips to her cheek, he could taste the salty tang of her tears and the underlying flavor of desire. So when she sought his lips with hers and parted them with a contralto sigh of pleasure and remembrance, it was only natural for him to flow with her into the kiss.

  It was perfect. Of course, it should be since there was really no point in having a mediocre sexual fantasy. But this union of bodies and lips and tongues was perfect in ways he’d never imagined before.

  There was the red flash of initial contact, then the slow yellow build of heat from the point of I want to the moment of I need and on to that place of madness, that roaring white vortex of I must have or I might die. Dante had expected that, had welcomed it and reveled in the newness that was somehow familiar.

  But he hadn’t expected the underlying sweetness he found, the innocence of texture and taste. He wallowed in it, steeping himself in emotions that weren’t usually parts of his dreams while his fantasy woman touched away his stress and hurt with lips that memorized his face and hands that roamed the contours of his back.

  He buried his face in her red-gold hair and gave thanks as he breathed in the scent of the woman—jasmine and fresh mown hay. He felt her lips near his ear and the feather-soft puff of air as she whispered another man’s name.

  “Oh Jay, I’ve missed you so much.”

  “Jay?” Feeling as if an entire bucket of ice-cold water had just been dumped over his head, Dante came fully awake to find himself in a strange room lying intimately on top of Sarah Taylor.

  He knew the moment she fully realized who and where he was, because she began to struggle beneath him and nearly finished him right then and there with one pointy kneecap.

  “Hold it!” he barked in a voice recently practiced on a kindergarten fieldtrip to the aquarium. Sarah froze and he extracted himself from the bed after checking to make sure he was wearing boxers. He was, but they were the pair Ellie had insisted he buy—the ones with a big yellow happy face centered on his crotch.

  Sarah took the opportunity to scoot up in bed and snap the light on, holding the coarse sheet up to her breasts with belated modesty. They stared at each other for a moment and Dante noticed that Sarah’s gaze dropped momentarily to the startling happy face before returning to his.

  “What the hell are you doing in my room?” They spoke simultaneously before Dante looked around the small space and was forced to concede the point.

  “I guess this is your room. I’m sorry for barging in.” He liked the way she looked with her hair tousled from his fingers, her mouth swollen by his kisses, and her eyes thoroughly confused and aroused.

  “You’re sorry for coming into my room? What about being sorry for jumping into my bed and assaulting me?” Sarah pressed her fingers against lips that still tasted of him, just as her belly still pulsed in need of him.

  “I guess I’m sorry for being in your bed, but you kissed me first.” Dante was trying to be reasonable when all he wanted to do was fling himself back into her bed and pick up where they had left off. He could still feel that dream kiss all the way down to his toes. His fantasy had become all too real.

  “I thought you were somebody else,” Sarah shot back defensively, but she knew it was a lie. After that first instant of flash and fire she had known she wasn’t kissing Jay. Her fiancé had been a brilliant scientist and a good man, but never in their three year relationship had a single kiss from him brought her to the point of ignition, never had his touch sparked and sizzled along her skin like molten lightning. She had turned in her rescuer’s arms, expecting a comfortable, friendly sort of kiss, not a maelstrom of sensation and burning mutual need.

  No, she had known she wasn’t kissing Jay, and as she looked across the room at Dante’s beautiful body and cobalt blue eyes, a small part of her admitted she’d known exactly who had been in her bed.

  Dante remembered the name she’d sighed in his ear “Yeah, I gathered that much.” He started to back toward the connecting door and saw her gaze linger on the room beyond.

  “Why were you in here anyway?”

  “You screamed and started crying. It sounded like you had one whopper of a nightmare. I don’t usually barge into other people’s hotel rooms, but Ellie wakes up with nightmares sometimes and I’ve gotten in the habit of going to her without waking up all the way. I guess I sort of went on automatic pilot when I heard you yelling.”

  Her eyes clouded over and he could tell she was upset by the memory of her dream. “Oh. I’m sorry I disturbed you. Thanks for coming to my rescue again, I guess.”

  He wanted to reach out to her, to hold her once more and sooth away the shadows that gathered close, but there was a space between them now that he couldn’t cross and he wasn’t sure it was a good idea for him to try. “Do you want to talk about it? You could tell me about your dream. That’s what friends are for.”

  Sarah shook her head sadly, thinking of Jay’s death. “My nightmares are punishment for my past. I once made a mistake that cost a good person’s life, so I guess it’s only fair I suffer a few bad dreams.”

  Dante felt as if he’d been hit with another slug of cold water then kicked in the stomach. Susan. She was talking about Susan, wasn’t she? Did she honestly think that a few bad dreams were punishment enough for killing a young mother? The lingering warmth he’d carried from their embrace died a quick death and was replaced by a low, burning anger and a firming of his resolve.

  As he fled from her room and locked the connecting door behind him, he knew what would have to happen.

  Sarah Taylor and her former coworkers would have to pay.

  Chapter Five

  Sarah got up before dawn the next day and drove to the show grounds to walk Modi in the show rings and let him look at the jumps they would compete over later that day.

  She was tired and cranky, having managed only a few hours of sleep after Dante left. She tried not to dwell on his abrupt departure from her room. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to be involved with her, not really. She was a woman with a not very nice past and he was responsible for the welfare of a small child.

  She should be used to the looks by now, used to the whispers that had followed her for months after Jay died and came back doubled after Susan’s suicide. She had thought before that she might like to move far away from all the people who had known her, far away from her own past. Maybe she should. She’d miss Tilda and Bob, but it might be best for everyone if she made a fresh start far away from the lab and its unresolved questions.

  Threading the chain over the colt’s nose, Sarah gave the lead rope a jiggle to let Modi know she meant business. She walked him along the grass verge next to the stabling area and allowed him to swing his head around like a berserk radar dish as he tried to watch everything at once.

  As she walked the black colt, Sarah refused to look for Dante in the sparse scattering of early risers around the show rings, and tried not to shiver as she remembered the fire ignited by the press of his body on hers and the scrape of his teeth across her soft
throat.

  Modi scattered across the road, carrying Sarah along with him as he played at the end of the rope. Reminded that she was in New York to do a job, she forced herself to concentrate on the young horse and mentally reviewed the various horse and rider combinations that would compete that week.

  As they neared the three show rings, Sarah was reminded of one of the two downsides of showing at Newcastle: the trees.

  Stout pines with big, knobby roots liberally peppered the rings and lay in wait for the unwary jumper rider who might misjudge a turn and crash into the rough bark. This bore on the second bad thing about Newcastle: the footing. No matter what was forecast, it always rained at least one day of the show each year and the rings ended up churned into muddy, root-filled pits by the end of the week.

  With this in mind, Sarah looped the rope off the in-gate of the jumper ring and absently retied it across the opening. Modi was jigging and snorting with excitement at the unfamiliar sights and smells, so Sarah let him sniff a few jumps and take a bite out of a decorative shrub as she scanned the ring for danger spots.

  She knew that later that day the seemingly innocent blue canvas between the jumper and hunter rings would come alive with the hiss and pop of grease as the cheerful Greek caterers cooked up hundreds of hamburgers, fried dough, and chicken breasts. Somehow they always timed it so they flipped a big burger just as Sarah cantered past them on the way to a jump. The resulting noise and puff of smoke was guaranteed to startle even the most made of horses and Sarah was pretty sure Modi would turn tail and run back to Boston with or without her.

  Thinking to accustom him to the idea ahead of time, she led the nervous colt toward the lurking food tent to let him sniff at it and take a nibble if he chose. As Modi stretched his elegant neck toward the flapping canvas, Sarah heard a pop and a whiz and Modi jumped high in the air as if stung.