She climbed up onto a stool in the little room equipped with a refrigerator, sink and microscope on one end, and an old army cot on the other end. A window above the cot looked directly into Molly’s stall.
“This isn’t much privacy.” He’d hoped for a strategic retreat to the house. He hopped up onto the counter behind her.
“She can’t see us in here, the window is one-way. Besides, we have to stay close to monitor the foal’s presentation.”
“Huh?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “We have to make sure all the parts come out in the right order.”
She was serious? “I know I’m going to be sorry I asked, but what if they don’t?”
“If the foal is breech or has a leg turned under itself, then we have to straighten it out.”
“We?” he asked, feigning squeamishness. But in truth he knew he’d do whatever needed doing if it would keep that look of happiness, of peace, on her face.
Checking her reaction as he moved, he rested his arm on her shoulder and eased her back against his knee. She didn’t seem to mind. He watched her watch the mare, her face full of wonder. A man could lose himself in a face like that.
Or find himself, Eric couldn’t quite decide.
“Don’t worry,” she said almost reverently. “Molly’s a veteran. She never has a problem.”
“Then why are we here?” he asked, just as quietly.
“Because it’s beautiful.” The horse’s labored breaths quieted to soft snuffles. Mariah nudged his knee with her elbow, pointing toward the stall. “Look.”
Reluctant to look at anything but her, he turned back to the window slowly. In a nest of straw behind Molly lay a tiny black being—a miniature replica of its father, Jet, with a white diamond on its forehead. Except this little copy appeared to be all bony knees, ribs and eyelashes. The skin over its nose wrinkled as it tested the scents of the world, making it look more like a little old man than a newborn.
Molly curved her head around and glided her tongue up one side of its face and over one ear. The little creature blinked as if just becoming aware of the sensation of touch.
Eric stretched his hand out to rest on Mariah’s thigh and her palm covered his knuckles. Turning his hand upward, he laced his fingers with hers. Looking at the colt, he suddenly wished he’d watched the whole birth. Mariah was right. It was beautiful. Not nearly as beautiful as her, but awfully nice to look at, nonetheless.
The soft awe on her face gradually fading, Mariah slid off the stool, around Eric, and strode toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to imprint the colt before he tries to stand up.”
“Imprint?”
She stopped to explain. She still had a few minutes. “There is a short period of time after birth when you can expose a newborn to certain sensations, and it’s like they get encoded in his brain or something. I run my hands over his legs and his ears and put just a little weight on his back, and the patterns are with him forever. Later, when he’s grown, I can touch him in the same way—to pick up his feet to be shod or put a saddle on his back—and he’ll accept it, even enjoy it. He’ll respond to my touch for the rest of his life.”
She left Eric in the viewing room and started her exercises with the colt. She’d almost finished when she noticed him standing at the stall door. He had a quiet way about him sometimes.
Eric watched skeptically as she knelt down in the straw next to the colt and skimmed her fingertips over the little guy’s shoulders and back. He absorbed the way she fondled his ears and gently flexed each of his legs, the way she cupped his tiny hooves in her palms.
His mouth went dry. In mere minutes she’d made a believer out of him. He knew if she ever touched him like that, he would remember it, respond to it, all his life. Hell, he was just watching and his body was responding to it.
The question was, what was he going to do about it?
Beside her, the black foal stretched his front feet out and pushed with his hind end. The effect sent him toppling over his nose to his right side.
Eric frowned. “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. He’ll get the hang of it in a minute.”
Eric didn’t look convinced. The colt tried again. This time he did a header and fell to the left.
Shaking his head and snuffling indignantly, the colt stretched his front legs out for a third try. This time, he made it to his feet. He stood for a minute, swaying until he found his balance.
“He looks like a granddaddy-longlegs spider with that little body perched on those spindly legs,” Eric said, a smile replacing his worried look.
The colt fell again. Startled, he lay in the stall, blinking as if he couldn’t figure out how he’d ended up on his belly in the straw.
“Come here,” Mariah said to Eric. He stepped inside the stall. “This time when he pushes himself up, you grab his back end and I’ll grab his front end.”
She had hardly finished her sentence when the colt lurched upward. She looped an arm around his neck while Eric, a little slower on the uptake, made a grab for the tail. Together, they steadied the colt. As he found his balance and took a few wobbly steps, they relaxed their grips but kept their hands close, like nervous parents following a child’s first bicycle ride.
The colt turned his head toward Eric and then stumbled sideways, away from him. On her knees, Mariah caught him.
“I guess he’s afraid of me, too,” Eric said, then looked up as if he’d just realized the comparison he’d made.
Mariah rubbed the colt’s neck. “Your size scares him. Try getting down to his level, and then hold still.”
Never taking his eyes off her, Eric squatted on his heels. Mariah turned the colt loose. After a few minutes, the baby took a few tentative steps toward Eric. Stopping about three feet away, he stretched his neck out to Eric’s face.
“Blow in his nose,” Mariah said softly, reluctant to break the peace the two new men in her life had found. “It’s how horses introduce themselves.”
Still watching her, Eric pursed his lips and puffed gently. The colt’s ears twitched, forward then back. He pawed the ground with a front hoof once, then stepped into Eric’s chest, nearly knocking him down.
Mariah laughed quietly. “There, now you’re friends.”
Enc looked like he was enjoying himself, rubbing the colt’s chest and neck. Slowly, he stood, careful not to startle the youngster. He’d be good with animals, she realized. He had an innate gentleness about him.
He rubbed the colt’s neck gently a few moments, and then turned to Mariah. His face furrowed with the same concern she’d seen when he’d fretted over the colt’s clumsy attempts at standing.
“What about us?” he asked. “Are we still friends?”
“I don’t know what we are anymore, Eric.” She met his eyes and found a glow there that warmed her bones. “Friends, enemies...”
Lovers.
The thought blew into her mind and refused to be swept out.
Eric opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the colt’s nose bumped his forearm. The little guy’s pink tongue curled along his lips, and he sucked aimlessly at the air. “Hey, guy, I’m not your mama.”
“He’s hungry. Push him toward Molly.”
It took a little maneuvering, but they got the colt turned so that his head pointed under the mare. The colt nudged the underside of her belly until he found her swollen udder.
“It didn’t take him long to find breakfast,” he commented against a background of quiet gurgles as the colt nursed.
“He’s a good, strong colt. Smart, too, just like his daddy.”
“Maybe we should follow his lead and go find some breakfast of our own.” He rubbed his abdomen. “It’ll be daylight before long, and my stomach is reminding me that we’ve missed a few meals lately.”
“You go ahead up to the house, I’ll be along in a few minutes.” Truthfully, she wasn’t very hungry. “I want to keep an eye on the
colt a little while longer.”
As Eric closed the stall door behind him, Mariah absently stroked the colt’s neck. Her palm glided over silky black fur, but her mind remembered the feel of a hard male chest. Her fingers slid through the fine strands of the baby’s mane, and she wondered what it would be like to tangle her fingers in Eric’s thick, dark mane.
What has gotten into you, obsessing about touching him all the time?
“Eric,” she called. He looked at her through the bars of the stall wall. She chewed on her lower lip, suddenly not sure how to say what she felt. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
He cocked his head quizzically.
“For getting all hysterical on you,” she explained.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
She felt a warm blush creep up her neck. “I put you in an awkward spot, throwing myself at you like that.”
“Did you hear me complaining?”
“I heard you say no.”
“You heard me say I wouldn’t take advantage of what you’ve been through today. Not that I didn’t want to.”
Mariah had trouble sorting out the difference.
Eric walked back into the stall and stood in front of her. Without touching her anywhere else, he pressed a kiss on her mouth. She savored the weight and texture of his lips. So many new sensations. She wanted to explore them all, but the kiss ended far too soon.
Eric drew his head back and cupped her jaw in his fingertips, studying her seriously. “This thing between us is crazy. Dangerous.”
“Risky,” she agreed. She flicked her tongue over her lips and tasted him there.
His eyes had dilated, opening like dark portals to his soul. She liked what she saw there: desire, tempered by tenderness.
“Ah, hell.” Slowly, he checked over his left shoulder and then his right.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for blunt objects.”
He lowered his mouth to hers again, smothering her laugh before it escaped her lips. What passed between them for the next few seconds was not a laughing matter. The little gasping sounds she couldn’t help making when he gave her a chance to take a breath were very serious. As was the slight aroma of smoke and the sweet scent of hay clinging to them both.
He coached and coaxed her through the rituals of making love with her mouth. The thrust. The parry. The surrender.
When he pulled back his head, both their chests labored equally for breath. She questioned him silently.
In answer, he rested his forehead on hers. “Give it time, Mariah. You can’t undo twelve years in one night.”
“But maybe you can.”
She felt his smile against her cheek, and he planted a whisper of a kiss on her ear. “I’m good, honey, but I’m not that good.”
On a sigh that sounded like it wanted to be a groan, he backed toward the stall door.
“Eric?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Did you mean what you said, earlier, about not having been with anyone for a while?”
“Yes.”
“You said you were married once.”
A long pause stretched between them, heavy with uncertainty.
He shifted from foot to foot, then jammed his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans and rocked from heel to toe, staring at the floor. “I met Cheryl not long after I joined the marketing department at Purgatory. We got married about a year later, right after I got my first promotion.” Nearly a full day’s growth of beard shadowed his jaw, but it couldn’t cover the reflexive tick of muscle underneath. “She was intelligent, smart, had a real future with the company. I thought she would make the perfect corporate wife.”
“She didn’t?”
“Turns out she didn’t want to be the corporate anything. Not long after we got married, she quit her job—just gave up her career like it was nothing. Then she started in on mine.”
“She didn’t like what you did?”
“Oh, she liked the nice house it paid for in the suburbs and the membership at the club and the fancy parties it got her invited to just fine, but she didn’t like the ten-hour days—twelve with the commute—or the business trips that kept me out of town two weeks at a time, or the pager that interrupted what little time we did have together.”
“Sounds like she got lonely.”
“She got bored, there’s a difference.” He sighed. “Mike was a teenager by then, and he needed my attention, too. She was jealous of the time I spent with him. That’s when she decided she wanted a baby—said her biological clock was ticking.”
“You didn’t want a family?”
“I already had a family.” He looked away. “I just didn’t understand her rush. She was only twenty-five, and I was trying to get my career off the ground. So, ‘One more year,’ I told her, or ‘after the next promotion.’”
“Some things are more important than a job.”
“I believe a man ought to be sure he can provide for a family before he starts one.”
Always the responsible one, Mariah thought. Always practical. But then, he’d learned that lesson early, thanks to his father.
“Money isn’t the only thing a father provides a family, Eric. It isn’t even the most important.”
Something painful shrouded his eyes and Mariah felt guilty. Who was she to criticize his choices? He’d devoted his life to his family; she might have been the death of hers.
“So what happened?” she asked, turning her mind away from the dark thoughts.
“I guess she got tired of waiting. One day I came home and found her house keys, joint credit cards and checkbook on the table with a note saying she’d moved to Vero Beach with the guy who did our taxes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. To tell the truth, I wasn’t really sorry to see her go. It was sort of...a relief. I never wanted her to be unhappy, and our marriage had been over for a long time.” He paused, then added grimly, “I’m just sorry things didn’t work out better for her. She’s divorced again now and raising two little girls on her own.”
Mariah couldn’t believe it. His wife had left him, and still he felt responsible for her. Felt guilty that she didn’t have a better life. Mariah’s feelings for the woman—a woman she’d never met—ran unexpectedly hostile.
“But surely since then...” she started, remembering how they’d gotten on this topic to begin with. Surely he hadn’t been alone since his wife had left.
“Since then I’ve been busy.” He turned away, clearly not wanting to pursue the subject any further.
Remembering she’d said something similar on the mountain when he’d asked her why she was alone, Mariah smiled tentatively. “Maybe it’s time we both made ourselves a little less busy.”
He dragged a frustrated hand through his hair and walked out of the barn.
Eric had put on a pot of coffee for himself, boiled a kettle of water for Mariah’s tea and made up some sandwiches when he’d returned to the house. They’d eaten in near silence and then gone their separate ways to catch a couple hours of sleep before dawn.
Even though he ached for a night’s rest, Eric had been reluctant to retire to the guest room, so he’d stretched out on the couch where he could keep an eye on things—including Manah’s bedroom door.
He was in over his head with her, and he knew it. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t get involved with her. That promise had been a lot easier before this turnaround in her. This gradual discovery of the sensual—and sexual—side of herself might just unravel him and all of his promises.
The depth of the emotional pull he felt toward her was what unnerved him. He wasn’t ready for it. He wasn’t good at long-term relationships of any kind. He didn’t have it in him. He’d proved that time and time again, with his dad, Mike, Cheryl.
It had been a long time since Eric had formed any real relationship with a woman, and not because he’d been too busy. After his divorce he’d had his fill of mindless sex witho
ut passion or commitment. But each encounter had left him a little emptier inside. He’d had to stop before the emptiness devoured him.
And he thought he’d learned to live without it, until he’d kissed Mariah.
Not just kissed her. Drowned in her. Who needed oxygen, with her breathing life into his starving arteries? The pulse of arousal still beat steadily in his loins, matching stroke for stroke the pounding m his head.
Restless despite his fatigue, he’d picked a book at random from the shelves and scanned the first few chapters without really comprehending what he’d read. That might have done it—numbed him enough to sleep—if he’d simply shut the book and flicked off the light then. But no, before nodding off, he’d gone to the kitchen for a glass of water. As he’d rounded the corner back into the living room with a cool tumbler in his hand, he’d glanced up in time to see Mariah scuttling along the landing toward her bedroom.
She’d worn nothing but a towel, and she’d hesitated outside her door to smile at him, a sly, inviting smile, and touched her lips as if imagining the pressure of his mouth on hers.
He’d nearly cried. Nearly rushed up the stairs to replace her imagination with the real thing. Nearly rushed upstairs because his imagination couldn’t do justice to the feel of her hot little body pressed against him.
And then she’d slipped into her room and closed the door behind her. Eric had wrenched his eyes away, sending an aching pulse down his spine. His skin prickled, hot and itchy as if he’d suddenly developed a heat rash.
And the night hadn’t gotten any better from there.
His need wailed like a single, high-pitched trumpet note, growing louder, more urgent, as time passed. He could quiet the din. All he had to do was walk up those stairs. Tap softly on the door. She would let him in.
But Mariah deserved more than one night of peace. She deserved forever, and forever meant a man who wanted the things she wanted. Someone who could live the way she lived. Someone who shared her dreams.
Mariah and her mountain were inseparable. The Double M wasn’t just her home; it was a part of her. And it was in danger. She was in danger.
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