by Ward, J. R.
Before she knew it, Devlin was leading her and Sabbath to the ring.
“Watch the mound,” he said. “That’s where they’re falling.”
A.J. nodded. “Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.”
Her name was called out through the loudspeakers and Sabbath took his cue from her heels. With a flash of his black tail, they pranced forward into the ring. Overhead, the announcer went on to describe some of her recent accomplishments, the man’s aristocratic vowels and Rs rolling like croquet balls.
A.J. and Sabbath made a pass by the president of the club so she could doff her hat to him and the officials of the event. A minute later, she heard the all-clear sound and set the stallion into a canter. They took one last circle before facing off at the first jump and then crossing the start line.
The stallion took the opening oxers with such grace even A.J. heard the crowd’s swell of approval through her concentration. Cutting into the first turn, he didn’t fight her; rather he seemed to understand her thinking, and they ended up in perfect position for the next jump. With a stunning combination of poise and power, they soared over the wall and continued onward.
In the crowd, momentum for them grew with every fence they cleared, spurred by the strength of the stallion and A.J.’s firm control of him. Watching from the rail, Devlin heard the rapt sighs and gasps as each jump was mastered and knew he was seeing history being made. A.J. and the stallion were jumping faster and cleaner than any of the other competitors, than anyone would have dared expect.
As the two approached the water jump, A.J. reined in Sabbath, slowing them down, giving him a little time to collect himself. She could feel the stallion’s hesitancy, a faint stiffening in his legs, but he didn’t shy away and, when he leapt with surprising confidence into the air, they cleared the obstacle with room to spare.
It was, people would agree afterward, the round of a lifetime.
Right up until the unthinkable happened.
Going cleanly into the last three jumps, Sabbath and A.J. approached the mound with its raised platform and rail fence. They had speed and a good angle in their favor. In the saddle, A.J. was feeling solid. With his hooves pounding over the ground, the stallion was bearing down on the jump steadily. They were going to make it.
Suddenly a brilliant explosion of light went off in Sabbath’s face. A photographer, determined to get a picture of them, had forgotten to turn off his flash.
Blinded, the stallion lost his stride and leapt to one side. A.J. tried to correct their course by throwing her weight in the opposite direction and pulling back on the reins. Their velocity was too great, however, and the platform rushed up to them. Sabbath was forced to jump at an angle and they scrambled onto the grass, wildly off-balance.
To keep him from awkwardly leaping over the upright and plummeting to ground level with a landing that would hurt his legs, A.J. yanked back on the reins, trying to redirect them down the side of the platform. It was too much stress on her arm. A stinging pain shot through to her shoulder and she was crippled with agony. Sabbath jerked one way, to clear the rail, and she lurched the other, loosing the traction of the stirrups.
With a sickening dread, she felt herself losing her seat in the saddle and then watched, in the disorienting slow motion of impending injury, as the stallion cleared the jump without her. Her final thought, before she hit the ground, was how beautiful he looked as he sailed through the air.
A.J. landed hard and blacked out.
As medics ran to her, the crowd went silent with shock. Then a heavy, rhythmic pounding began to overwhelm the field. Starting with the feet of the club members, and spreading on a wave of sympathy and regret, the whole crowd beat the bleachers, announcing the awful news. The noise rose louder and higher, until everyone on the grounds halted whatever they were doing, their blood running cold. There was only one reason for the sound, a kind of static death march.
Someone had fallen. And could not remount.
17
DEVLIN WATCHED in horror as she fell from the stallion. With a leap, he cleared the rail and ran into the ring, just behind the medics. Raw fear was raging through him as they did a preliminary examination and ran an IV line into A.J.’s arm. As she was loaded onto a stretcher, her eyes flipped open. He rushed forward and took her hand.
“Sabbath?”
Devlin had forgotten all about the horse. He glanced over his shoulder, seeing that Chester already had hold of the stallion and was walking him around slowly.
“He’s with Chester.”
“S’okay?”
He nodded to reduce her agitation. It wasn’t enough.
“His legs?” She began to rise.
Devlin put a hand on her shoulder, pressing her gently back down. He didn’t even look at the stallion. “He’ll be fine.”
“You’ll make sure Chester wraps him tight?”
“I promise.”
“Liniment. The foul-smelling one…”
“The one they both hate. I know.”
“Arlington!” Garrett Sutherland’s voice cut through the chaos as he ran to his daughter.
A.J. was muttering incomprehensible syllables.
“Are you her husband?” a medic asked Devlin while they slid her into the back of an ambulance.
“I’m her father,” Garrett interjected. “I’m going with her.”
Devlin opened his mouth to argue but the man was already climbing inside. As they shut the doors, A.J. lifted up off the stretcher, calling Devlin’s name.
Before the doors shut, he shouted out to her, “I’ll meet you there.”
When the ambulance left, he felt as if his world had ended. Again.
As he was standing there, a flashbulb went off in his face. It was a galvanizing event. He went from frozen shock to raging anger in the split second it took for the brilliant light to fade. Lunging in fury, he grabbed the camera out of the man’s hands and threw it to the ground.
“Hey, you broke my—” the man said.
Devlin gripped the photographer’s shirt in his fists and hauled him up close. “When I find out which one of you bastards let that goddamn flash go off, I’m going to crack more than a lens.”
“Easy there, boy.” Chester’s calm voice reached him in the nick of time. “Let ’im go. C’mon, now.”
Devlin pushed the man away. “Get out of my sight.”
The photographer didn’t protest any further, just gathered up the pieces of the camera and disappeared in a hurry. The rest of the press backed off.
Devlin turned and looked at Chester, who was standing with the stallion. He was finding it hard to string sentences together. “How’re his legs?”
“He’s lame. Right front. But it’ll heal.”
“Good, I’m glad I didn’t lie to her.”
When Devlin didn’t move, Chester gripped his shoulder. “Boy, look at me.”
Devlin tried to.
“She needs you.”
“I know.”
“So go on now.”
“How will you get back with the stallion?”
“I’ll give them a ride.” Devlin and Chester turned in surprise at Peter Conrad’s voice. “And you can use our facilities to rehab the horse if you need to. Anything you want, we’ve got. It’s all yours.”
“That’s right kind,” Chester replied.
Devlin said, “The stallion should go there right after the vet looks at him. He’s going to need hydrotherapy first thing tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll call ahead and have a stall waiting. You know they’ve taken her to County, right?” Peter asked him. “You get on the highway heading south—”
“I know how to get there,” Devlin said.
Peter flushed. “Of course you do.”
In a fog, Devlin went to the trailer and drove ten miles to the hospital where he’d been taken the year before. Coming back to the scene of his operations and difficult recovery was too surreal for him to comprehend. He decided it had to be a nightm
are. Life’s parallels just couldn’t be so cruel.
By the time he located A.J. in the Emergency Department, an orthopedist had taken X-rays and was making his report to her and her father. When Devlin walked into the room, the white coat stopped talking.
“Devlin!” A.J. exclaimed, holding out her hand. She was propped up on a bed, one arm lying on a pillow in her lap. He went to her.
The doctor continued. “What you had was a fracture that hadn’t healed properly. The pulling motion reactivated the break, which caused the pain you felt before you fell. Then you compounded the injury by landing on it. We’re going to put you in a cast but you should be good as new in about six weeks.”
A.J. groaned.
“I see you’re one of those horse types,” the doctor said casually as he scribbled notes in her medical record. “Don’t know how you rode with that arm at all. You must have been in some kind of pain. When did you first break it?”
A.J. looked up at Devlin and watched his face tighten. “I fell a couple of weeks ago.”
The doctor looked up in surprise. “You’ve been using that arm for how long?”
A.J. mumbled something, hoping to get him off the subject.
“You’re one tough lady.” He flipped the metal cover of her chart closed. The clapping noise was loud in the tension of the room. “I’ll be back with the plaster.”
“Arlington,” her father started as soon as the curtain closed, “how could you be so reckless?”
One look from her and he stopped talking. He’d been dismissed and he knew it.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Devlin, will you be able to give her a ride home?”
“Of course.”
The good-bye with her father was awkward and rushed because A.J. was anxious to be alone with Devlin. When she finally was, she reached out to him. The arms he put around her were stiff and she felt afraid.
“Sabbath is going to be fine,” he told her with a detached voice. “Chester was going to wrap him well and your stepbrother offered the use of the Sutherland facilities to rehab him. I told them to take him there.”
“Devlin?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. Terror settled cold and hard in her chest.
“Devlin, about my arm—”
The doctor and a nurse came back into the room.
An hour later, she left the hospital with a cast and a broken heart.
During the trip home, Devlin didn’t say a word to her. When they pulled up to the farmhouse, he led the way inside. It was dark and he turned on the lights one by one, moving around the rooms of his home like a ghost. She waited for him to stop moving, her heart pounding like she’d run a marathon.
“Devlin, I know you’re angry,” she said when he came out of the dining room.
“I’m not angry,” he said.
She searched his face for any sign of warmth. There was none.
“Devlin, I’m sorry I kept the injury from you.”
“I believe that.”
“My arm’s going to be fine. I’m okay. Sabbath’s going to heal. We can resume training here—”
“Not here.”
With the bald words, A.J. felt like she’d hit the ground again.
“What are you saying?”
“I agreed to get you to the Qualifier. I did. Now you need to go.”
Through a dry throat, she said, “Is it just Sabbath who needs to leave?”
It was a lifetime before she heard his answer.
“No.”
Tears, hot and wet, started to fall from her eyes.
“You can’t mean this. You just can’t. This can’t be the end.”
She was waiting for a denial, for a sign of weakening from the hard line. She found none.
“You lied to me,” he said. “You lied to me deliberately about your physical condition and you did it again and again. Every time you went into the ring on that horse.”
“I didn’t want you to worry about me.”
“When we made love, and you were naked against me, I thought that there was nothing that could come between us. When I held you in my arms, and you told me you loved me, I believed you. When I asked how you were doing, I assumed you were being truthful.”
“Devlin, I—”
“I knew something was wrong but I was so in love with you…I wanted to believe your words more than I wanted to see the truth.”
With shock, she realized he’d spoken in the past tense.
“Don’t you love me anymore?”
“I don’t trust you. You can’t have love without trust. What’s worse, I don’t trust myself anymore. This is the second time I’ve ignored my instincts. You’d think after Mercy, I’d have learned the lesson.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Don’t do this. There must be something I can do. Something I can say—”
“I’m going out,” he told her. “When I get back, I’ll help bring your things over to the mansion. I know that arm’s got to be hurting you.”
He stepped around her to get to the door. Didn’t look back as he left.
Great wrenching sobs of grief and self-blame racked A.J. and she fell to her knees in the foyer. As she gave herself up to the emotions, she knew a pain so deep, she felt as if she would come apart.
18
A MONTH later, Devlin walked out of the farmhouse to get the morning paper, which had landed on the frost-laden grass. It left a green imprint when he picked it up. As he turned to go back into the house, he looked up at the sky. Gray clouds shut out the sun and, against the stark sky, leafless trees moved stiffly in the cold wind.
He didn’t look up because he was interested in the heavens. He was studiously ignoring the stables. And the ring. And the paddocks and the trails.
But he felt trapped by their vicinity anyway.
All that was going to change, however, with the phone call he’d made the day before. He was putting the property on the market. The agent had been thrilled with the listing and he’d been assured it was going to go fast despite a hefty price tag. Quick was what he wanted, even though he wasn’t sure where he was going to move. He was contemplating somewhere far away, in distance and spirit. Like California. Or Hawaii. After all, he had plenty of money and no real roots. He was free to go wherever he chose.
Well, free to make the choice to leave.
He was far from unencumbered.
The ghosts of his love for A.J. haunted him, day and night, in the shadows and in the light. He thought of her all the time, almost to the point of obsession, trying to come to terms with what had separated them. He felt betrayed and sad. Beyond the pain he felt at her deception, he was still angry that she hadn’t taken into account the risks she’d assumed. Competing with her arm in that kind of condition had been foolhardy. Dangerous. She could have been hurt even more seriously. She could have been—
Devlin shook his head. Enough, he told himself. He’d rehashed it all enough.
As he went back into the house, he shut the door behind him to keep the cold out. The fire he’d started at four a.m., when he’d been wandering around aimlessly, had died down though the embers were still throwing off heat. He sat down and watched their red glow, tossing the paper on the coffee table. After staring into space, he caught himself before his thoughts once more became too anguished. To distract himself, he cracked open the Herald Globe, trying to fill the empty daylight with something. Anything.
When he got to the sports pages, he sucked in a breath.
Staring up at him, out of a grainy photograph, was A.J.
He scanned the article with a hunger that pained him.
She’d decided not to sue the reporter whose flash had blinded the stallion. But that wasn’t the shocker. She was selling Sabbath. And retiring from competition.
Devlin reread the text over and over. Competing was the most important thing in her life. And now she was just walking out?
He called Chester, who had followed the stallion over to Sutherland’s. Apart from the fact he was the
only groom Sabbath would let near him, there was, once again, no work at the McCloud Stables.
“Mornin’?”
“Ches, tell me she isn’t really quitting,” Devlin demanded. He just couldn’t believe it was true. After everything they’d done with the stallion, all her progress. Everything she’d sacrificed. Like their relationship.
“So ya’ read the article.”
“Why is she doing this?”
“She’s lost the drive.”
“But she’s good. I can’t believe she’s walking away. Is the arm not healing?”
“Arm’s fine. She just doesn’t have it in her anymore, so she says. She’s stayin’ on at Sutherland’s, though. Stepbrother’s moved on an’ gone. She’s runnin’ the place but says she’s not gettin’ in a show ring ever again.”
“But she loves to compete.” Devlin was shaking his head, incredulous. “And the stallion. She loves Sabbath.”
“The animal’s heartbroken. He hasn’t been eatin’ well. It’s a mess.”
There was a long silence.
“Ches, if I went to her, do you think she’d talk to me?”
“Depends on whatcha got to say. Should I tell her you’re goin’ over?”
But Devlin had already hung up the phone.
A knock sounded at her office door and A.J. looked up from her desk.
Her office. Her desk.
The possessive pronoun still sounded foreign. It had been a couple of weeks but she was still getting used to her new job.
“Come on in,” she called out.
One of the grooms stuck his head in. “When’s the vet coming?”
“Tomorrow morning. What’s up?”
“Sleeping Beauty’s got colic again.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Didn’t touch her feed and is walkin’ in circles in the stall.”
“Hell. Better call her owner. Is Johnson around?”
“He’s in the ring on Juggernaut. He’ll be done in a few.”