J. K. Sanders swung out and stood with one immaculately booted foot on the bottom step of the truck. “Can’t look a gift horse, and all that stuff, Doc. Larry Duntreith ought to get here middle of the afternoon with Marcus. I won’t be bringing you my horses until tomorrow. You got stalls for ’em?”
“Three, right?” Eleanor asked.
“Yeah. And tack. The saddles are pretty old, but they’re still serviceable.”
“We’ll have everything ready tomorrow when you come, including space for the tack in my office.”
“Door got a lock on it?”
“A very good one.”
“Yeah,” Gil said dryly. “We installed it ourselves, didn’t we, boys? Cut the keys, too.”
J.K. looked at Gil narrowly and scowled. He apparently didn’t enjoy jokes at his expense.
“It’s secure,” Eleanor said, and shook her head at Gil. He raised his eyebrows in a “Who, me?” gesture.
“If y’all are through funning, how about we unload these ladies into the pasture?” J.K. said.
Big and Robert stood silent and wide-eyed. Eleanor noticed that Selma stayed as far back as she could.
“Okay, J.K., back ’er up into the pasture so we can open the gates. Chadwick, can you and Slow Rise handle unloading?” Eleanor asked.
He nodded and gave her a quirky smile as he dropped to the ground from his perch. He moved with the easy grace of a man who was comfortable in his body. Unfortunately, Eleanor wasn’t comfortable watching him, not with the connection that seemed to hold even when they weren’t speaking directly to each other, or even when they weren’t looking at each other.
She was constantly physically aware of his presence, knew the compass point at which he stood, and like a needle that pointed north, she found herself gravitating toward that point automatically.
She had to try consciously not to address every remark to him. As a matter of fact, she was trying not to say anything to him that wasn’t a direct order. Let Ernest Portree make something of that.
The others hung over the newly mended pasture fence while Steve and Slow Rise opened the gates and prodded the cows and their calves down the ramp and into their new home. There was much lowing, some bellowing, and a great deal of jostling before they were all on firm ground.
Slow Rise stood back with his hands on his hips. “My, my, but ain’t they pretty things. When we gonna start taking ’em to some stock shows, Doc? Winning a few prizes?”
“When we’re ready.” And when the prison establishment decided it could trust prisoners to take care of their cows at a county fair and not run off to drink and gamble—or try to escape. That might not be for a while, if ever.
Steve propped himself easily against the side of the trailer and watched the cows wander off to investigate their new home. The autumn sun stroked his brown hair with red-gold, and his face and arms had lost the prison pallor already after less than a week in the sun. He looked as comfortable among the animals as Slow Rise and J.K.
He’s a murderer. Eleanor tried to repeat the words in her mind like a mantra, but they didn’t stick. Not when he smiled that gentle lopsided smile at her, not when his eyes crinkled at the corners that way.
“Man has a great butt,” Selma whispered.
Eleanor jumped. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Baloney. Woman would have to be dead not to appreciate those buns, not to mention the bulge on the front…”
Eleanor felt her face flame.
“Look all you like, Doc. Just don’t let him get close enough to touch—not your body, and definitely not your heart. You could get hurt real bad. I’d hate to see that happen to a nice lady like you.”
Eleanor felt her anger flare, then subside just as quickly. “You’re right, Selma.”
“You need to find somebody decent, honey, not some con.”
“I had somebody decent, Selma. I guess that’s all I’m entitled to this go-around. The last thing I want is to get mixed up in something that’d cause me more heartache.”
“Or headaches, and that man is a migraine waiting to happen, if you get my drift. He’s not like the others.”
“How so?”
“Most of them fight being in prison at first, then they kind of relax. Even if they swear they’re innocent, they act like ‘okay, you got me.’ Not Chadwick. He never gives any trouble, does what he’s told, but part of him isn’t really here.”
“Doc?”
“Yes, Big?” Eleanor turned from Selma, but had trouble tearing her mind away from Selma’s words.
“Can I go into the pasture with the little calves?”
“Of course. Just don’t leave the gate open.”
“No, ma’am.”
Robert followed him, sticking as close to Big as possible—using the huge man body as a shield, Eleanor thought—and after him trudged Gil. The only person who didn’t want to be enclosed with large bovines was Sweet Daddy. He was obviously terrified, but swaggering around as though he had more important things to do than play with calves.
The moment Big shut the gate, she asked Selma, “What does it mean? Steve’s attitude?”
“No idea. Makes him more dangerous, I guess. Too smart. Shoot, those calves are cute little devils, aren’t they?”
“Oh, heck, Selma, let’s go in, too,” Eleanor said. “Just don’t fall over that shotgun.”
Despite her mantra, Eleanor gravitated at once to where Steve still leaned against the side of the stock trailer with his arms folded across his chest.
“Watch Big,” he said. “I think he has a gift with animals.”
“I think so, too. There’s something about people like Big that animals tune in to.”
“I had a groom like that,” Steve said absently. “He’d had a bad fall as a child. The horses watched out for him like a mother bear with a cub. But me—they’d just as soon run over me as not.”
Eleanor looked up at him. This was the first bit of personal information he’d given out. Horses? Plural? And a groom? She felt her hair rise at the back of her neck. Was that why he needed the two million dollars Ernest Portree said he’d killed for? So he could maintain a lifestyle that included horses?
“What? What did I say?”
Eleanor could have sworn she hadn’t moved or shown any change in her body language, but Steve apparently knew instantly that the emotional distance between them had increased. She shook her head. “Nothing. You must have done a considerable amount more riding than you intimated. Quarter horses? Jumpers?”
“Polo ponies. Please don’t mention it to the others.” He walked off with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his back straighter than she had seen it.
MARCUS AURELIUS IV of Duntreith came out of his trailer like a sleek red tank—a diesel that smoked and tried to mow down everything in its path. The trailer had been unloaded on the far side of the barn in the bull paddock, far enough away from the cows that Marcus could neither see nor smell them in anything less than a southerly gale. He was bellowing when he arrived and continued to bellow as he trotted around his paddock.
At the first touch of the electric fence he jumped back, snorted twice, stuck his nose against it a second time, repeated the snorts, then regarded it with a baleful brown eye. In succession he tried another side of his enclosure to see if it too would shock him. When it did, he moved around to the next until he’d circumnavigated the enclosure. Apparently satisfied he wasn’t going anywhere he trotted off to the center, put his head down and began to graze.
“Good bull,” Eleanor said approvingly. “Very sensible. Thinks on his feet.”
“Probably smarter than most of us,” Slow Rise said. “When we gonna start collectin’ him?”
“Collectin’? Whaddaya mean?” Robert asked. He couldn’t take his eyes off the bull.
“Well, son, it’s like this. See, a bull don’t have to go to the ladies no more. That’s old-fashioned. His sperm gets collected coupla of times a week, and each time he makes about a hundred of what they
call straws. One straw will take care of getting one cow pregnant. Freeze it, it’s good for years. Sell a good bull at ten bucks or more a straw.”
“Twice a week? Two hundred at ten bucks a pop?” Robert looked at the bull with wide eyes. “Man, that’s more’n I get for a rock.” He glanced at Eleanor. “’Course I never did sell no cocaine. The cops planted it on me.”
“The only difference is that someone has to do the collecting,” Eleanor said sweetly. “Any takers?”
Robert’s eyes grew huge. “No, ma’am!”
She laughed. “Don’t worry. We won’t start collecting him until spring, and by then I hope he’ll have at least a couple of blue ribbons from stock shows.”
“Whew.”
“We feed morning and night and top off the water troughs every morning,” Eleanor said. “The same for Marcus Aurelius, but nobody, and I mean nobody, is to go into that enclosure with him until we know how he reacts around people. Everybody got that?”
“Don’t have to tell Sweet Daddy twice,” Sweet Daddy said.
“He may be a perfect gentleman, but nobody’s ever demanded anything of him in his young life. If he resents our attentions, he could stomp any one of us through to China. Okay, everybody, evening chores, and a soft drink, then you’re off for the night. See you tomorrow early. We have to start getting that second pasture ready for the buffalo and finish bedding the stalls for J.K.’s quarter horses.”
The soft drinks every evening had become a tradition in just the short time that Eleanor had worked with the men. She could afford the minor expense, and the public relations value with her team was well worth it. Now without Mike Newman, everyone could relax, although Selma still kept the shotgun at hand.
Eleanor was leaning against the door of the barn when Steve came over to her.
“May I speak to you?”
“Sure.”
“Can we go into the office? I need some clarification on some of the fields you want in your database.”
“Of course.” She called to Selma, “Chadwick has some questions about the database. We’ll be in the office, but we’ll leave the door open. Is that all right?”
“With the door open? Yeah, fine.” But her mouth twisted in a tiny grin, which Eleanor pretended not to notice.
Eleanor entered the office with Steve right behind her.
She took a deep breath and thrust her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “So, what problems are you having?”
“With the computer program? None.”
“Then why—”
“I had to speak to you. You know why I’m here, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You’ve read my file. I saw it in your face when I mentioned the polo ponies. Don’t ever play poker. You’ll lose.”
“We shouldn’t be having this conversation.” She stared past him.
“I swear to you I did not kill my wife.”
“Steve—”
“I haven’t bothered to try to convince anybody I’m innocent for a long time. I told myself it was enough that I knew. Now it matters that you believe me. It shouldn’t, but it does.”
“A jury didn’t believe you. Why should I?”
“Chelsea was my best friend, as well as my wife. I could never have harmed her.” His voice had grown louder.
Eleanor touched his mouth with her fingertips. “Shh. They’ll hear you.”
He grasped her hand and held it to his lips.
She shivered, but not with fear. “Please. You mustn’t.”
She pulled away from him, but he held her gaze. “Do you know what it’s like to spend years convincing yourself you don’t need the warmth of a touch, a kind word, someone who actually looks into your eyes and sees a human being and not just a number?”
“Steve, please, Selma could come in at any minute.”
“All the more reason to tell you now. I may not have another chance. The day the jury convicted me, I knew I could survive in prison only if I stayed cold and shut myself off emotionally from everything that was going to happen to me.”
His voice now was low and urgent. “Dammit, until now I thought it had worked. I was handling it. Then one day you climb out of that truck. From that moment you never treated us like numbers, like criminals. The way you’ve looked after Big, the way you touched me and worried about me when I was hurt… You’ve awakened memories of a world of peace and love and honor where you don’t have to watch your back every moment or look for ulterior motives in every conversation. It hurts to remember, because I know I can never be a part of that world again.”
“Come on, people, time to go home.” Selma’s voice was louder than necessary.
Steve walked back to the waiting men without a backward glance.
Eleanor leaned against the wall beside the open door and tried to breathe. She was afraid. Afraid of believing him, afraid of caring what happened to him, of being caught up in everything Raoul Torres warned her about, and most of all, afraid that she no longer had the ability to tell truth from fiction, right from wrong, and simple loneliness from the blossoming of affection.
She hadn’t been emotionally touched by any man since Jerry died. Not even Mac Thorn had stirred her, yet this…this killer heated her blood, left her shaken, confused and frightened.
Jerry had not been the first man in her life. She understood the game, or thought she did.
But nothing had prepared her to feel such a pull of heart against brain as she felt now. This was a looking-glass world in which no one was what he seemed. Raoul had warned her that sociopaths tended to be expert at reading the needs of the people they came in contact with and reflecting them back. But they couldn’t keep up the pretense for long. Sooner or later the true personality emerged.
Had Steve recognized how lonely she was, how she longed to sink into a strong man’s arms? Did he understand how much she ached to feel the body of a man she loved moving inside her?
Did he understand her fear that she would never make love again? That no man would ever want her as Jerry had? Worst of all, that she would never be able to feel that complex mixture of passion and trust that she’d known with him?
Even if she were to trust Steve, they could never be alone together. Even the few sentences they’d spoken had been watched. All the men knew. Selma knew. Ernest Portree and the entire staff of the prison farm probably knew. And laughed at her, even pitied her.
All she knew was that her body and her spirit were hungry for his touch. She longed to feel his lips on hers, feel his body hard against her, see his face above her.
She suddenly realized she was completely alone in the twilight—Selma and the man had left. She walked through the barn and out to Marcus Aurelius’s paddock. The moment he scented her, he swung his great head toward her, snuffled and sauntered slowly over to where she stood beside the electric fence.
God, he was arrogant. So sure of his maleness, his superiority, his dominance over any female, even a human one.
“Not me, buddy,” she said. “I’m the wrong species.”
She could have sworn he shrugged. She reached carefully across the fence and touched his nose. Without warning he wrapped his tongue around her finger. She scratched the knot of curls in the center of his broad forehead. He sighed.
A moment later he pawed, spun and raced off to the center of the paddock again, for all the world like a fighting bull ready to charge.
“And they say females are changeable,” she said. “This particular female had better get her act together, or she’s going to get her booty bounced out of here before she’s even finished unpacking.”
ELEANOR WAS SCHEDULED for a short shift at the clinic—only four hours, five to nine. She walked into the clinic from the staff parking lot in back, passing the cattle holding pen that held the wounded pit bulls in their cages, but in the low light, couldn’t see much. The dogs set up a chorus of barking, but there were no growls.
Up front Mabel presided over an empty waiting room.
“Nobody waiting?” Eleanor asked.
“Dinnertime. Wang Chun just left. Every time I think about how much a lot of our owners look like their pets I think of how Mrs. Milligan and Wang Chun don’t. You think she wanted a Chinese crested because it’s so fragile and dainty and Mrs. Milligan could play linebacker?”
“Tacky, Mabel, tacky. How’re the pit bulls?”
Mabel sighed. “Lost another one today. Too starved to fight the infection.”
“Not the little female? She’s the one I worked on.”
“No, one of the male dogs. We got them all bathed and cleaned up today. Talk about your three-ring circus!”
“Did anybody get bitten?”
“I think they were too scared to bite. A couple of the Humane Society volunteers came in to help, thank heaven. I don’t think any of those poor mutts had ever felt warm water before, much less soap. Had to bathe most of them at least twice, and a couple three times. You should have seen the water—filthy. And then two of them we had to hand-bathe because we didn’t want to get their incisions wet. According to Dr. Rick, most of them are pretty young—under a year old.”
“Most of them don’t survive much beyond that.”
“Terrible to think so, but you’re probably right. That female had no more business having puppies that young than I do.”
Eleanor patted Mabel’s shoulder. “The mind boggles at the thought of you having puppies.”
“Oh, go on back to Dr. Sarah’s office and read your charts. I’ll call you when the clients start coming in after supper. You’ve got a couple of notes from Dr. Sarah. She’s finally stopped throwing up.”
“Any large animals staying overnight?”
“Here.” Mabel handed Eleanor a stack of charts. “Megan Cormack’s Welsh pony is in the founder stall with his front hooves bandaged. He needs a shot of bute every four hours for the pain. Dr. Sarah says watch him, he bites.”
“Ponies usually do.”
“And one of Mr. Montano’s ewes is down at the far end. She had a run-in with a barbed-wire fence and tore her udder. Dr. Sarah stitched her up and says just to watch her, too. She’s had antiobiotics in her feed, so she doesn’t need a shot.”
The Payback Man Page 11