The Stable Affair

by Jessica Andersen

  “I said that I was waiting for you to come to me.” His mouth twisted wryly. “I can see from the deer-in-headlights look on your face that the thought never even occurred to you. How flattering.”

  Sarah was stunned. She’d never thought of Matt as anything but her buddy from work, a bit of a playboy who took few things seriously. She had never taken any of his teasing declarations of love seriously before, but the look on his face seemed awfully serious all of a sudden. “Matt…I never even thought…”

  “Obviously. That’s why I had to come out here myself to make sure you were happy and to see if there was any chance of something happening between us. I was too slow last time—you were going with Fontaine even before I knew you were available—so this time I’m asking earlier. Can I take you out some time? Is there a chance for something between us?”

  Sarah fumbled for a moment before realizing that in a strange way this was an answer to her prayers. She needed somebody to talk to about Jay and Susan and the weird things that had happened to her since she left the lab. Who better than a trusted friend who already knew most of the story? “Sure, Matt. I’d like that.”

  When Matt grinned and relaxed, Sarah felt a two-pronged shaft of guilt. Was it really fair of her to use Matt this way? What if he really did have feelings for her? Nah, he was just being friendly; Matt could be like that—really intense one moment, then off on a lark the next. He couldn’t really be serious, could he?

  The second part of her guilt was even less reasonable. In some weird way, Sarah felt as if accepting Matt’s vague invitation was a betrayal of Dante. But that was wrong, wasn’t it? She and Dante didn’t have any sort of agreement for exclusive friendship and they certainly weren’t dating.

  But still, it felt mildly wrong.

  For the remainder of their evening she and Matt kept to neutral subjects: mutual acquaintances, new lab techniques they were trying at BoGen, and hospital politics. He was careful not to speak of Sarah’s problems at the lab and she was grateful, at least for the moment.

  It wasn’t until Matt brought her back to the farm and walked her to Tilda’s porch that Sarah felt the sense of wrongness return. Someone was watching her again, hiding in the deep darkness of the countryside and observing her as she said goodnight to her date.

  “Sarah, are you okay? Is there something wrong?”

  She cast furtive glances around but saw nothing beyond the yellow circle of brightness cast by the porch light. But she knew he was out there, watching.

  “No… no, I’m fine. Well, thanks for tonight, I enjoyed catching up.” She felt an almost overwhelming urge to rush Matt off the porch. She didn’t enjoy performing for an audience and had no real desire to kiss Matt goodnight, even though they had shared many a friendly peck on the lips in her previous life at Boston General.

  “You’re welcome, I enjoyed myself too.” Matt stepped closer and Sarah grabbed him in an almost desperate hug. She figured he couldn’t kiss her if they were plastered together, and he might get the hint and leave.

  Unfortunately, Matt read her embrace as an invitation and dove in with gleeful abandon, somehow managing to mash his lips against hers without loosening her hold. He ground his face against hers until her nose felt crooked and she thought a molar might have been loosened.

  Sarah’s exclamation, “Urmph!” was something less than a moan of ecstasy, but she managed to extricate herself from Matt’s arms without it looking like a titanic struggle. She quickly stepped out of his reach. “So you’ll call me so we can make plans, right?”

  “Sure, darling. I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.” Matt bounded off the steps whistling boyishly as if he had just made a major conquest, and Sarah waved him off as he drove away.

  She made sure he was well gone before she moved to the far end of the porch and yelled into the darkness, “Come on, you bastard! I know you’re out there! Did you like what you saw? You want a piece of this you coward? Show yourself, you sneaky son of a bitch!”

  “You needn’t yell, I’m right here.” Sarah whirled around at the quiet words and fell back a pace with her hand at her throat before she recognized the voice.

  “Devers! What the hell are you doing here? And where the hell are you?”

  “On the porch swing. Are you aware that your vocabulary deteriorates dramatically after ten at night? You curse like a trucker.” Dante kept his voice mild but inside he was seething with impotent rage. He had almost convinced himself that Sarah Taylor was an innocent bystander set up by one of her higher ups at Boston General, and that she was blameless in Susan’s death. Had he done that because he wanted an excuse not to hate her? Probably, but he’d done it nonetheless.

  Then he found her in the arms of another of Daniel’s prime suspects: the head technician at the Genetic Testing Unit. And what plans were they speaking of? Devious ones no doubt. Her seeming betrayal was a sharp knife in Dante’s gut, one that made him bleed and suffer. Were she and Bender working together still? Were they lovers even? The thought made him want to punch something.

  “Who cares about my vocabulary? You never answered my question—what are you doing here at this time of night?” Waiting for her obviously, but Sarah wanted to know why. Had he been jealous of Matt? Had he wanted to stake his claim on her? The thought made her smile. She’d never had two handsome men competing for her affections before. She thought she might grow to like it.

  Dante rose and felt his bones creak. The tension he was feeling centered on his forehead, banding his skull with the beginnings of a whopper of a headache. “I don’t know. It was my mistake, never mind.” He just wanted to go home, wanted to forget the sight of Sarah wrapped in another man’s arms. He wanted to sleep and see her naked on her white horse, naked in his arms, whispering his name, not some other guy’s.

  “A mistake?” Sarah’s voice cracked with incredulity. “You wait here for how long? A half hour?” He didn’t answer so she guessed it had been longer. “You wait here that long, then don’t even bother to tell me what you wanted? Did you want to tell me something? Ask me something? Or were you spying on Matt and me? Did you enjoy the show? Did it turn you on?”

  That did it. Dante could almost hear the whip crack of his temper giving way. He stepped toward Sarah and grabbed a handful of the fuzzy pink sweater she’d worn on her date. It pissed him off that she’d dressed like a girl to go out with Bender. She’d never dressed up like that for him before. He would’ve remembered that.

  “No, as a matter of fact I did not enjoy watching your old friend,” he sneered the words, “eat you alive. The next time that murdering bastard puts his hands or lips on any part of you I’m going to punch his teeth down his lying throat. You got that?”

  Sarah got it, but had no idea what it meant. She just goggled at Dante for a moment, feeling his fist clench and unclench in her angora sweater. “I beg your pardon?”

  Dante closed his eyes for a moment as if arguing with himself. “Oh the hell with it,” he snarled. “Are you awake?”

  “Huh? Yeah, I’m awake.”

  “Good, me too.” Using his fistful of sweater as leverage, Dante yanked Sarah against his chest and banded his arm across her back to pull her close as his lips descended upon hers. In that moment there was no guilt, no betrayal, no past and no future. There was only feeling.

  Sarah was staggered by those feelings as all five senses sharpened to almost painful acuity. She saw the angular curve of Dante’s jaw, the coarse stubble of his beard and the fiery blue of his eyes that filled her vision before her lashes fluttered down in acceptance. She smelled that odor that was uniquely his: the earthy smell of feral male overlaid with the civilizing tang of photographic chemicals. She heard her own breathy moan and Dante’s growl of satisfaction when he changed the angle of his kiss and she let him in—deep and deeper still.

  And oh, the taste and feel of it was magic. The dark, exotic flavor of him seeped through Sarah, spiraling down to her core in a bloom of dizzying heat and she felt the scrape of
his shadowed jaw and the electrifying nip of his teeth at her throat before his lips returned to hers. She pressed her body closer in the age-old desire for two to become one.

  In the hotel room at Newcastle, she had pretended to herself that she thought she was kissing Jay, but she knew for a certainty that the man that kissed her now had none of the soft civility of her ex-fiancée. Dante dove directly into the kiss with the force of a tornado and the passion of a thunderstorm.

  When she moaned again, Dante could barely restrain himself from sweeping her up and carrying her off to some deep, dark place in the woods surrounding the farm and finishing what they’d begun. He wanted to tear his mouth from hers, throw his head back and howl at the moon—he needed an outlet for all the needs and sensations raging through his system. He felt alive for the fist time and he wanted to cry for the sheer joy of it. He wanted to run, to fly, and to scream with the power of feeling.

  But he did none of these things. That small, nasty, rational part of him that remained apart from the fray sat in disapproving judgment. We do not know her, it said, we do not trust her, and we do not know whose side she is on. Dante ignored this voice for several minutes but slowly, irrevocably, the words began to penetrate his lust-fogged brain.

  He withdrew from Sarah by degrees, finally ending their embrace and resting his aching forehead against hers. He framed her face with hands that he fought to keep gentle when they wanted to tear at her clothing and press her down on the porch swing. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here tonight.” He stepped away from her and grabbed his black leather jacket. “You do understand that taking this any further would only complicate things more, don’t you?” He stalked off the porch and into the night.

  Sarah watched him take his leave without replying. She wasn’t sure she could speak if she wanted to. When her knees threatened to buckle, she sagged down to sit on the swing, on cushions that still smelled faintly of Dante.

  His Jeep pulled out of the visitors’ lot, brake lights flashing briefly red as he paused for another car, and Sarah finally found her voice. “No. Actually, I haven’t the faintest foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

  She replayed the entire encounter in her mind as her system finally started to level off and her heartbeat slowed and the feel and taste of him became a new memory. She realized that she hadn’t understood much of what he said, but one comment puzzled her.

  Why had he called Matt a murderer?

  Chapter Seven

  The alarm shrilled with gleeful abandon and Dante swore viciously as he swung at the clock. He heard a muffled giggle and peeled his eyes open to see Ellie standing just inside his bedroom door looking impressed. He started to swear again and covered it with a groan instead. He had to remember to watch his language.

  “Scat,” he growled, and Ellie giggled again as she scampered away. There was an industrious banging in the kitchen and Dante hoped she wasn’t trying to make scrambled eggs and toast in the same pan again. Last time she tried that, the results had been a gluey, inedible mess and he’d thrown the pan out rather than attempt to clean it.

  Hadn’t Mrs. Phillips said it was a little early for Ellie to be cooking on her own? He should probably make a rule about that.

  A shower and two cups of coffee later, Dante was feeling much more human. He glanced around the rented house with its rented furniture and grimaced, wishing fleetingly for a house he and Ellie could call their own. Mrs. Phillips did her best, but the place still looked pretty grim.

  After he was done with this assignment, maybe he and Ellie would find a small place to buy.

  “Hey! Here’s Sarah!” The child paused and pointed to a glossy photograph in one of the back issues of Horseman’s she was flipping through while eating cereal. Sure enough, there was Ellie’s trainer jumping a huge ditch on a big gray horse. She looked younger, happier. “That’s Almost Noble, the horse she rode on the trail with me the other day!”

  Dante flipped the magazine around to glance at the brief article that accompanied the picture. It reported that well-known amateur rider Sarah Taylor had been injured in a trailer accident in Western Massachusetts. Her horse had been hurt and the driver, a man named Jay Fontaine, had been killed.

  Jay. That’d been the name she’d cried out the first time they’d kissed. Did she miss the man that much after so long? Did she still love him? Had she been thinking of Fontaine last night?

  The questions made his head ache again, but as Dante’s eyes lingered on the glossy photograph he knew it was time to start forcing some of the answers.

  He and Ellie drove to one of her favorite places, the duck pond. They brought a bag of stale bread ends, of which they had plenty and Dante made a mental note to go grocery shopping soon. They were in dire need of fresh bread.

  Ellie ran down to the water’s edge while Dante lowered his body to a bench, groaning as he did so. He had to start sleeping more soundly soon or he was going to be moving like an old man. “Don’t get any closer to the water, Pumpkin, I don’t want to have to go in after you. And watch out for that big goose over there, he looks mean!”

  There was a dry chuckle from behind Dante. As usual, he hadn’t heard Daniel Riley’s approach. “You’re even starting to sound like a daddy. Next thing you know, you’ll be carpooling to Girl Scouts.”

  Dante aimed a glare at the sandy-haired man as he settled on the bench. “Kiss my ass Riley,” Dante said, looking quickly to make sure Ellie was too far away to hear him swear again.

  “It’s too far away, I can’t reach it.” Daniel never could resist making short jokes—he towered three full inches over Dante’s six-foot-one. Daniel settled on the bench, and the two men unconsciously adopted the poses in which they had spent countless college hours—long legs stretched out in front of them, arms crossed over their chests, eyes fixed on the day’s entertainment. Today it wasn’t sports they watched on TV, it was little Ellie feeding a family of ducks.

  “How’s she doing?”

  Dante didn’t need to wonder what Daniel was asking about. He and the big blonde man had been closer than brothers growing up and could see into each other’s hearts. “Better now I guess. The nightmares seem to be tapering off and she gets along with Mrs. Phillips okay when I can’t be there after school. Once summer vacation starts, I’ll bring her to most of the horse shows with me.”

  Daniel grunted and nodded. “That’s good. She needs that kind of stability. You get her a riding teacher yet? I remember before I left that was practically all she could talk about.”

  “Sort of. How’d everything go with the insurance thing? Did the husband hide the stamp collection like you thought?” Now that Daniel was back, Dante wasn’t sure how to begin. He didn’t really have any evidence of Sarah’s innocence. He fervently hoped it was true, but Daniel had never been one to credit dreams and desires.

  “No, it was the brother-in-law, but we got everything straightened out with a minimum of fuss.” Daniel noticed that his friend wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention. “Then we all painted our feet blue and ran around the waterfront exposing ourselves to all the tourists, especially the families.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear everything went okay.” Dante looked up in puzzlement at Daniel’s guffaw. “What?”

  “Nothing, man. What’s on your mind? Something’s obviously eating you. Are you having trouble making friends with Sarah Taylor?”

  Yeah. If only that was his problem. “Not exactly. We’re getting along okay. What do you know about Bender?”

  Daniel paused in confusion at that non sequitur. “As in a drunken revelry or that problem scuba divers get if they come up too fast?”

  “No you big ox, as in Matt Bender the head tech at BoGen’s Genetics Unit.” Dante raised his voice to carry across to the duck pond. “Ellie Honey, you can throw the bread from further away from the water, can’t you? Remember what I told you: if you fall in again, you have to ride on the roof rack on the way home so you don’t get the seats wet, right
?”

  A trill of laughter was Ellie’s only answer, but she obediently moved back from the water a bit as she continued to feed the hungry mallards.

  “Oh, that Bender. Frankly I don’t know much about him. Why?”

  “Well, I met him the other day and I remembered you saying if there was anything shady going on in that lab when Susan died, that Bender was as good a suspect as Sarah Taylor if not better.”

  Daniel stared at his oldest friend. “Then you’re really going through with it?”

  It was Dante’s turn to stare. “Of course. You should know better than anyone since you helped me collect the original information on the lab. What else did you think I was going to do with it, look at it and walk away? Not likely. I owe Susan more than that.”

  “Honestly, I’d hoped you would meet Miss Taylor and decide that she’s a nice person who made one horrible mistake and has been punished for it. I thought maybe you’d step back and realize that even if the test result was wrong, nobody in that lab forced Susan to take her own life—she did that herself. Then I guess I saw you finding a long term job somewhere and settling in a nice suburb to raise Ellie, maybe find a wife and have a few kids of your own and be happy.”

  “That’s your idea of happiness? A wife and kids and a house in the suburbs? Sure, I plan to settle down somewhere with Ellie—after I’m satisfied that Susan’s death was just a mistake on the lab’s part and a dramatic overreaction on her part.”

  “What’ll it take to convince you of that, my friend?”

  “I’m not sure anymore. You were right about the first part; Sarah is a very nice person.” Dante’s voice softened over her name and Daniel’s eyes sharpened. “And if it was just her, I’d be ready to believe she just made a mistake on the test results and then didn’t follow up with enough counseling. Then maybe I could walk away. But it’s not just her any more.”

  “In what way?”