The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  “What would be the point?”

  Neils Haddonfield was the head groom at the Damson County Therapeutic Riding Association’s barn—the barn manager, really. He was big, blond, and quiet, gentle as a lamb with the children and the horses, and hell in a muck truck with whiny parents.

  “Let’s see if we can’t make her more comfortable.” Mac took the final step toward the mare and ran a hand down her neck. She gave no sign she felt the caress, so Mac went on a hunt for her sweet spots.

  Females were females after all, and some things held true across species.

  When his fingers dug into the coarse hair over her withers, she gave a little invisible shudder, one Mac understood, because his hand was listening for it. He settled in, gently, firmly, and the mare’s head dropped a few inches. He added a second hand on the other side of her withers, and she braced her misshapen front feet wider.

  “She likes that,” Neils said, frowning.

  “You give her any bute?” Mac asked as he moved his hands a few inches up her neck.

  “A couple grams after breakfast.”

  The medication was helping her stand on the rubber brick surface of the barn aisle. Left to her own devices, she might well be lying flat out in the weak spring sunshine just to get off her neglected feet.

  “We could put her in the stocks,” Neils said. “Get it over with more quickly.”

  “And give her a horror of the stocks, me, and anybody who helped put her into them. I’m only making a start on those feet today. Getting her reliably sound will take months, if it can be accomplished at all. Can you take over on this side of her neck?”

  Neils moved, taking up the slow massaging scratch Mac had started. The mare’s expression registered the shift, but she didn’t raise her head.

  Mac pulled his wheeled toolbox over and ran a hand down one of the mare’s legs. She stood for it, though she had to know what came next.

  When he lifted her left foreleg, she let out a sigh, because shifting hundreds of pounds of body weight to the three hooves remaining on the ground had to be painful. The phenolbutazone would help, but it wouldn’t eliminate the discomfort entirely.

  Working quickly, he nipped off as much of the mare’s overgrown toe as he dared, then set the foot gently back down. He stepped away, signaling to the horse she could take a moment to recover, while Neils kept up the scratching.

  “Good girl,” Mac said, extending his hand to her nose again. “You’re a stoic, little Luna, and you have more in common with the riders here than you think. Give it time, and we’ll find you someplace to call home.”

  He worked around the horse quickly but quietly, spending a few minutes on each hoof, rather than finishing one before moving on to another. She seemed to understand his method and appreciate it. By the time he ran his hand down her leg to file the final hoof into shape, she’d already shifted her weight in anticipation.

  “She’s sensible,” Neils said, patting the shaggy neck. “Who would have thought? But then, they’re all sensible for you, MacKenzie.”

  “One beast to another,” Mac said, using his foot to nudge the wheeled toolbox away from the horse. “Do we know anything about this one besides that she’s been badly neglected?”

  “Adelia thinks she might have seen her a few years ago on the Howard County circuit, and the arthritis in the feet suggests she might have been worked too long and hard over fences, but that’s only a hunch.”

  “What are you feeding her?”

  They went on, as only two horsemen can, over every detail of the mare’s care. What she ought to be fed, with whom she might be safely turned out, how soon. Whether grass was a good idea, because spring grass could pack a nutritional wallop.

  “I’d hand graze her,” Mac said, eyeing the mare. “She needs every chance we can give her to associate people with good things. To horses, new grass is the mother of all good things.”

  Adelia Scoffield sauntered up in riding jeans, chaps, and a short-sleeved T-shirt, though the day was cool. She’d been on one horse or another since Mac had pulled up a couple of hours ago, and her exertions showed in the dark sweaty curls at her temples.

  “Have you two listed all the reasons why Luna is a bad idea?” she asked.

  “Shame on you, Adelia.” Neils passed the lead rope to Mac. “You will catch your death, running around like that.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over Adelia’s shoulders. Adelia gave the lapel a little sniff, something Luna would have understood, had she not been so nervous.

  “We were admiring your new addition,” Mac said. “I’ve done what I can for her feet, but it’s a slow process. She was leery, but she gave me the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Poor thing.” Adelia held out her hand to the mare, who took two steps back. Mac moved with the horse to avoid a situation where the mare hit the end of the lead rope and started making the bad decisions common to anxious horses.

  “Easy,” Mac crooned, his hand going to the mare’s withers. “It’s just the boss coming to see if Neils and I are behaving. She’s good people, if you overlook her tendency to pick up hopeless cases like Neils.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Adelia said. “I came to see if Neils can go on a mission of mercy for me.” When Adelia made no move to come closer, the mare relaxed marginally beside Mac.

  “Neils and mercy don’t strike me as the most compatible combination,” Mac said, petting the horse slowly.

  “We got a call from Sid Lindstrom.” Adelia took another surreptitious whiff of the coat. “Sid’s the foster parent of one of our new riders, and says there are two behemoth horses on their new property, horses that weren’t there on the day of closing.”

  “Behemoth horses aren’t suitable for therapeutic programs,” Neils began, hands going to his hips. “You can’t—”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Adelia said gently. Something passed between the small dark-haired woman and the big blond man that suggested to Mac they were a couple, if the routine with the jacket hadn’t confirmed the notion already.

  He liked both of them, and respected what they were doing with the therapeutic riding program, though the idea that everybody but MacKenzie Knightley had somebody with whom they could exchange silent looks and warm jackets was tiresome.

  “I said we could take over some pony chow, and send somebody to check on the situation,” Adelia went on. “They could be stray pensioners who broke out of the neighbor’s paddock this morning, but it’s spring, Neils. What if somebody’s stallion got loose, and the other horse is a mare in season who’s eloped with him? That’s not a safe situation for greenhorns to manage, and these people know very little about horses.”

  “Because their foster kid rides in our program, we’re going to start making house calls?” Neils tried to glower as he put the question to his boss, but the guy was whupped. He stood only a couple of inches shorter than Mac’s six foot four, but Neils had become a whupped puppy the first time Adelia had turned her big brown eyes on him.

  “One barn call,” Adelia said. “If they can afford a four-hundred-acre farm free and clear, then they are potential sponsors for the therapeutic riding program.” She reached out to the mare again, but the horse came out of the daze induced by Mac’s petting and scratching, and backed up again.

  “Somebody’s a little shy,” Adelia said, dropping her hand. “Will you go, Neils?”

  “What’s the address?”

  She told him, and Mac’s hand went still on the horse’s neck.

  “I’ll go,” Mac said. The mare shrugged, a perfectly normal horsey reminder to resume his scratching.

  “You will?” Adelia’s expression was curious, while Neils looked relieved.

  “It’s on my way home, and Luna was my last customer here this morning. It’s Saturday, and I have the time.”

  “My thanks.” When Neils reached for Luna’s lead r
ope, the little horse did not flinch or take a step back.

  Mac gathered up his tools and loaded his farrier’s truck—not to be confused with his everyday truck. He took a minute to watch a therapeutic riding session getting started in the small indoor arena. A kid with no feeling below her thighs was settling onto the back of a therapy pony, her expression rapt, while the horse stood stock-still and awaited his burden.

  The girl had earned this moment, learning parts of the horse, names of the tack and equipment, and doing what she could from her wheelchair to contribute to the care of the horses. Mac had watched week by week as she’d progressed toward this day.

  Her name was Lindy, and Mac stood silently at a distance as she sat her mount, her expression radiant. A special moment.

  Mac turned away, climbed into his truck, and drove off. Once en route, he checked his messages to see if any of his paying clients had gotten locked up Friday night—an attorney who specialized in criminal defense often racked up messages over the weekend—but, oh happy day, his mailbox was empty.

  Which left him free to wonder why Luna was uncomfortable around women, or whether she’d merely been reacting to MacKenzie Knightley’s own unease with the fairer sex.

  He pulled up the lane of the address Adelia had given him, which was, indeed, a four-hundred-acre farm. Four hundred three and a quarter acres, to be exact.

  Fences were starting to sag, and boards had warped their nails out of the posts. A spring growth of weeds had yet to be whacked down from the driveway’s center, and the most recent crop of winter potholes hadn’t yet been filled in with gravel. The white paint on the north side of the loafing shed was peeling, and the stone barn itself needed some pointing and parging near the foundation.

  All in all, a damned depressing sight for a man who’d had as happy a childhood on a farm as a boy could.

  Which was to say, very happy.

  “Hello, the house!”

  No response, which wasn’t a good sign. Farms were busy places, full of activity. Even if humans weren’t in evidence, then the dogs, cats, and chickens usually were. But this farm had no dogs, no sheep, no cows, no visible animal life of any species.

  “Over here!”

  The shout came from the far side of the hill, where the land rolled down to a draw that Mac would bet still sported a pond and a fine fishing stream, but the tone of voice had been tense, frightened maybe.

  He didn’t run. If a horse were cast against a fence, or two horses were taking a dislike to each other, then tearing onto the scene wouldn’t help.

  “Coming,” he yelled back. “Coming over the hill.” He rummaged in his truck, extracting two lead ropes and two worn leather halters, as well as a half-empty box of sugar cubes.

  When he crested the hill, the sight that met his eyes was so unexpected he stopped in his tracks, and had to remind himself to resume breathing.

  * * *

  They were not horses, they were equine barges, munching grass and twitching their tails in a slow progress across the field where Sid had discovered them. They shifted along, first one foot, a pause to munch grass, then the other foot, all with the ominous inexorability of equine glaciers, leaving Sid to wonder how in the hell anybody controlled them.

  If anybody could control them.

  What would it feel like if one of those massive horse feet descended on a human toe? How many hours would elapse before the beast would deign to shuffle its foot off the bloody remains, to lip grass on some other blighted part of the earth?

  How did animals that large mate, for God’s sake? Surely the earth would shake, and the female’s back would break, and giving birth to even the smallest member of the species would be excruciating.

  This litany of horror was interrupted by a shout from back over the rise in the direction of the house and barn. The voice was mature male, which meant it wasn’t Luis.

  Help, then, from the therapeutic riding program.

  “Over here!” Sid yelled back.

  The animals twitched their ears, which had Sid grabbing for the only weapon the house had had to offer, useless though it likely was. Something as big as these horses could run over anything in its path and not notice an obstacle as insignificant as a human.

  “You planning on sweeping them out of your pasture?”

  A man stood a few feet away, a man built on the same scale as the damned horses, but leaner—meaner?

  “Sidonie Lindstrom,” she said, clambering down off the granite outcropping she’d been perched on. “You’re from the therapeutic riding place?”

  “I’m their farrier.” His voice was peat smoke and island single malt, and his eyes were sky blue beneath long, dark lashes. Which was of absolutely no moment, and neither was the arrestingly masculine cast of his features.

  “What’s a farrier?”

  “Horseshoer.” He wasn’t smiling, but something in his blue eyes suggested she amused him.

  “Blacksmith? Like Vulcan or Saturn?”

  “Close enough. You say you didn’t notice these two were on the property when you took possession?”

  “I didn’t say.” Sid took a minute to study her guest—she supposed he was a guest of some sort—while his gaze went to the two big red horses yards away. Enormous, huge, flatulent horses.

  “Do they do that a lot?” she asked, wincing as a sulfurous breeze came to her nose. God above, was this how the cavalry mowed down its enemies?

  “When they’re on good grass, yes.” Absolutely deadpan. “Daisy!”

  The nearest beast lifted its great head and eyed the man.

  “You two are acquainted?”

  “There aren’t many pairs like this around anymore. Buttercup!” The second animal lifted its head, and worse, shuffled a foot in the direction of the humans.

  “What are you doing, mister?” Sid scrambled up on the rocks, shamelessly using the blacksmith’s meaty shoulder for leverage.

  “You’re afraid of them?” he asked, not budging an inch.

  “Anybody in their right damned mind would be afraid of them,” Sid shot back. “They could sit on you and not even notice.”

  “They’d notice. They notice a single fly landing on them. They’d notice even a little thing like you. Come here, ladies.” He took a box of sugar cubes from his jacket pocket and shook it, which caused both animals to incrementally speed up in their approach. They were walking, but walking quickly, and Sid could swear she felt seismic vibrations.

  “You’re supposed to help here, you know, not provoke them.” Her voice didn’t shake, but her body was beginning to send out the flight-or-flight-or-flight! signals.

  She’d gotten mighty good at the flight response.

  “Calm down,” Mr. Sugar Cubes said. “If you’re upset, they’ll pick up on it.”

  “Smart ladies, then, because I’m beyond upset. These are not fixtures, and they should not convey with the property. A washing machine or a dryer I could overlook, but these—crap on a croissant, they could bite you, mister.”

  He was holding out his hand—and a sizable paw it was too—with one sugar cube balanced on his palm. The first horse to reach him stuck out its big nose and wiggled its horsey lips over his hand, and then the sugar cube was gone.

  “You too, Buttercup.” He put a second sugar cube on his hand, and the other horse repeated the disappearing act. “Good girls.” He moved to stand between the horses, letting one sniff his pocket while he scratched the neck of the other. “You need some good tucker, ladies, and your feet are a disgrace. But, my, it is good to see you.”

  Red hair was falling like a fine blizzard from where he scratched the horse’s shoulders, and the mare was craning its neck as the man talked and scratched some more.

  “Not to interrupt your class reunion, but what am I supposed to do with your girlfriends?”

  “They aren’t mine, though
they might well be yours. Come meet them.”

  He turned, and in a lithe, one-armed move, scooped Sid from the safety of her rocky perch and set her on her feet between him and the horses.

  “Mister, if you ever handle me like that again—”

  “You’ll do what?”

  “You won’t like where it hurts. How do you tell them apart?”

  They were peering at her, the big, hairy pair of them, probably thinking of having a Sidonie Salad, and Sid took a step back, only to bump into a hard wall of muscular male chest.

  “Look at their faces,” he said. “Buttercup has a blaze, and Daisy has a snip and a star.”

  Sid was pressed so tightly against him she could feel him speak. She could also feel he wasn’t in the least tense or worried, which suggested the man was in want of brains.

  What he called faces were noses about a yard long, with big, pointed hairy ears at one end, nostrils and teeth at the other, and eyes high up in between. Still, those eyes were regarding Sid with something like intelligence, with a patient curiosity, like old people or small children viewed newcomers.

  “How do you know them?” she asked, hands at her sides.

  “Thirteen years ago, they were the state champs. They’re elderly now, for their breed, and it looks to me like they wintered none too well. You going to pet them or stare them into submission?”

  “Pet…!?”

  Before she could rephrase what had come out as only a squeak, Vulcan had taken her hand in his much larger one and laid it on the neck of the nearest horse.

  “Scratch. They thrive on a little special treatment, same as the rest of us.”

  Sid had no choice but to oblige him, because his hand covered hers as it rested on the horse’s neck. Over the scent of horse and chilly spring day, Sid got a whiff of cloves and cinnamon underlaid with notes that suggested not a bakery, but a faraway meadow where the sunshine fell differently and clothes would be superfluous.

  The hand that wasn’t covering Sid’s rested on her shoulder, preventing her from ducking and running.

  “Talk to them,” he said. “They’re working draft animals, and they’re used to people communicating with them.”