“Why don’t you take the front end?” I suggested.
He smiled his most engaging smile, and we switched places. He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze as we passed each other. I jumped. Cali jumped and banged into the machine which tipped onto Lynette’s toe.
“God damn it,” she said.
“Oh, shit,” I said at that same time. “Sorry.”
“My fault,” Malcolm said.
He stooped to right the machine, and I returned to Cali’s head.
“What were you two doing over there, dancing?”
Malcolm caught my eye. “You could say that.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah, but he doesn’t like it when I lead.”
Lynette snorted. “I have that problem with men all the time.” After a moment of fiddling with the dials, she said, “Okay, who’s going to hold the plate?”
“I will,” Malcolm said.
Maybe he moved too fast, I don’t know, but Cali tossed her head and caught me in the chin. I reeled back and felt my lip, tasted blood. Malcolm pulled out a handkerchief. I don’t know any man except my uncle who still carries a perfect square of soft white cloth in his pocket. I tried to take it from him, but he held it out of my reach.
“I’m leading, okay?”
I rolled my eyes and let him dab the blood off my lip.
“You okay?” Lynette asked.
I nodded.
“One more try, and I’m knocking her out. Robert, you get this mare’s other front leg off the ground and keep it there.”
I picked up the plate, but Lynette and I collided.
“Maybe try it from the other side?” she asked.
I went to where Malcolm stood holding my horse’s bent leg. She was leaning most of her weight into his hands, and he had his shoulder set against hers.
I had to crouch and nearly touch my head to her steel-shod foot to position the plate. If Malcolm let go, I’d have a hoof print over my ear, a monster headache, and maybe even get to suck my whipped cream through a straw for the rest of my life.
“You got her?” I whispered.
“You bet,” he said.
“Where do you want me?” I asked Lynette.
Malcolm grunted and said something under is breath. I could swear it sounded like “Everywhere,” but must have heard wrong. Lynette got the plate where she wanted it, and I tried not to move.
“Okay,” she said. “Here we go. No dancing over there.”
I held my breath and heard the little buzz of the x-ray. We all exhaled. I stood, and Malcolm gently released Cali’s leg.
“How many more?” I asked.
“There’s more?” Malcolm asked, lacing his fingers together and stretching his arms.
“Three or four,” Lynette answered.
“No problem,” he said.
A minute later, we prepared to do it again. My horse refused to pick up her foot for Malcolm, so I did it, and waited while he got in a good position for us to switch places. He hesitated a moment, but there was only one way to do it. I’m sure he tried to keep space between us. Just the same, his hips came against my rear end, his chest along my back, and his arms around me. Just for a moment. Then, I wriggled out from under him.
“She’s going to be okay,” he whispered to me as I picked up the plate and crouched.
I smiled. “You are entirely too nice for your own good,” I said. “I hope you’re right.”
“I’ve been telling Robert that for years,” Lynette said from Cali’s other side. “I’m glad to hear someone agree.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Malcolm said.
Lynette made a disgusted sound and muttered, “He’s hopeless.”
“How do you want me this time?” I asked her. If I’d had a free hand, I would have smacked myself for asking the same stupid question. I heard Malcolm’s response clearly this time, but I’m not sure he meant me to.
“You can’t imagine,” he muttered.
- 15 -
Later, I stood in Malcolm’s mudroom, which was off to one side of his kitchen. He’d insisted on making me something to eat, and I hadn’t taken much convincing. When Lynette finally left, it was dark. We returned to the tack room to find Noire had gorged herself on the rest of Clara’s roast beef.
I stared into a small mirror, turning my head from side to side to look behind me. Couldn’t tell about my aura, but I looked like crap. “Can you see dark spots in my aura?”
“Christ. Did Renee tell you that?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Apparently, I have the same problem.”
“It’s a freaking epidemic,” I said, returning to the kitchen.
He chuckled and put a plate of spaghetti in front of me.
“What’s an aura, anyway?” I asked as I dug in.
“It’s your…you know.” He sat across from me and waved his hands around in a vague outline of my body. “Your light, your energy. Hell, I haven’t a clue.”
I don’t know why I was so intrigued by the idea. Maybe if I understood my aura, the big it that was my life would straighten itself out. “Can she really see auras?”
Malcolm twirled a big forkful of pasta. “Damned if I know.”
It was the second time that day, no, the third, that we’d sat down to a meal together. Fourth, if you counted the quick sandwich in the tack room. And I was damned if I could point to the one thing that had happened over the course of the day to make me feel so at home in his presence. That’s not to say I was comfortable. I was too aware of him, too disconcerted by the slow smile that said he felt the same heat coiling in his belly I did.
I could have hung out in his dingy kitchen with him all night. But I wanted to make a last check on Cali and the others and get to bed. The next few days would be long enough. I ate quickly, said I was tired—which was true—and went out.
Malcolm walked with me to the barn. The moon was bright enough in the inky sky to cast shadows. It had been nearly full on Monday. Not that I wanted to remember the events of that night.
A howling came from behind the house and stopped me in my tracks. Noire was at my leg, so it wasn’t her, not that I’d ever known her to bay at the moon. Several sharp yips followed, then more howls that lifted the hair on my neck. I grabbed Malcolm.
“What the hell is that?”
He put his warm hand over mine, and I nearly forgot the Hounds of the Baskervilles.
“Coyotes.”
“Coyotes?” First vultures, now coyotes. Jesus. I thought I’d come to the Midwest, not the Old West.
Noire’s ears had come up at the first note. She had a belly full of roast beef topped with spaghetti, so I thought she might not react, but then she stuck her nose in the air and let loose a plaintive wail. Yep, we were both going crazy. I might start howling at the moon myself at the rate things were going.
I raised my voice to be heard over the chorus. “You got a lot of dead stuff needing to be cleaned up around here?” The moment the words left my mouth, I clapped my hand over my lips. “Sorry.” I was glad for the near dark. If the heat in my cheeks was any indication, I’d turned bright red. “That was a terrible thing to say.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Yes, terrible.” He pressed his fist against his mouth and faked a cough. I felt him shake with laughter before any sound escaped, then he let go.
And I joined him. We were both tired and stressed, and we laughed long and hard. Noire looked at us like, well, like we were howling at the moon.
Malcolm collected himself first, patted my hand where it still clung to his arm, and said, “Yes, I suppose we do.”
“Stop.”
He wiped a tear from my cheek. “Things were so boring before you arrived.”
“That’s enough.” I shoved him away from me, feeling drained but better, even though I knew death was no laughing matter.
He just smiled and took my hand and held it all the way to the barn. These small intimacies—laughing together, walking hand-in-
hand under the blazing moonlight, not to mention literally crying on his shoulder—made my heart swell in an unfamiliar way. As soon as we reached the first stall, I used the excuse of opening the door to pull away from him, and he let me.
We looked in on all the patients, and Malcolm came as far as the tack room.
“I’ll be in town through the weekend,” he said. “I’ll help with the extra work.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve already done a lot. The place looks great. I just wish…” he trailed off and glanced out the window into the dark, toward the pasture and beyond.
I couldn’t see whatever he saw in his mind, but I think that’s when I fell in love with him a little. Because what I could see was the passion he had for the land. His heart was in it. And I didn’t want to let him down. I had no idea what he really expected from me, but somehow I would help him keep this place the way he wanted it.
“Vi, I wish…I’d understand if—”
“Don’t say it.” I almost put my fingertips to his lips, but stopped short of touching him. “It’s okay. It will be okay.”
He looked me very steadily in the eyes for some moments. Whether assessing the truth of those words, or simply trying to believe them, I don’t know. Then he grazed his knuckles over my swollen lip, barely touching, just the fine hairs on his fingers tickling my skin.
“Should have put ice on that,” he said.
I about melted on the spot. “It’ll be okay.” Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think either of us thought I was talking about my fat lip. Tomorrow, I would get more information from him on the working partnership.
“I’m glad you came here,” he said in that velvety voice he’d used with me a couple of times.
I nodded, because if I said anything it would probably sound like, Please join me upstairs, and I might drool into the bargain, so I turned to go up, alone, then stopped and faced him.
“By the way,” I said, returning to what he’d murmured when we’d been helping the vet. “I have a very good imagination.”
- 16 -
Noire ceased howling when the coyotes quit. I slept deeply, and I wish I’d slept without dreaming, but there was nothing new in Wastrel’s visit. He was back in the manure heap, pawing like he had the first time. It nagged at me come morning, but I shoved it aside in favor of watching Henrietta nurse her kittens and purr while I massaged liniment into my bruises. The kittens still had their eyes closed, but they were starting to wiggle around. Soon, I’d begin picking them up.
All was peaceful in my world.
Then, just as I finished feeding the horses, Malcolm strolled in. Wearing his kilt.
I watched him approach while I filled Cali’s water bucket. I needed to call Penny and tell her what was going on. She could remind me why I shouldn’t mess with the boss. Right at that moment, as the morning sun caught in his hair and that skirt slapped his thighs, I couldn’t for the life of me think of one reason why I shouldn’t drag him upstairs right then and there. Heck, we wouldn’t even have to worry about getting him out of his trousers.
Damn, I had it bad. Icy water splashed my feet, and I quick kinked the hose to keep from flooding the stall.
“Are you going to hang around here all day dressed like that?”
He glanced down at the kilt. “What’s wrong with this? It’s comfortable.”
I moved to the next stall, put the hose in the bucket. “It’s distracting.”
He smiled a too-satisfied smile. “You think that pink skirt you had on yesterday wasn’t distracting? Nice legs, by the way.”
I overflowed the water bucket again. See? I already wasn’t concentrating.
“Why don’t you let me do that.” He took the hose and hummed the chorus of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as he went to the next stall.
“Not funny,” I said. I brought Cali into the aisle to change her bandages.
“You can try sometimes…” he sang, not in tune.
Sheesh. I decided to ignore him. Lynette was supposed to call first thing with the results of the x-rays. If Cali’s knee was messed up, I didn’t know what would happen. I couldn’t afford surgery. Would Lynette take monthly payments on the bill? Veterinary care was expensive. I didn’t even have medical coverage for myself.
“You just might find...” drifted from the other end of the barn.
The tune caught in my head, and I found myself humming, you get what you need.
“What do you say we get everything done and go for a ride?” Malcolm asked when he finished watering. “You can ride Gaston, or whoever you want.”
“Will you stop singing?”
“Maybe.”
I sat on my haunches and looked at him. He’d change out of the kilt if we went riding, so it was a good idea. Then again, he’d put on breeches that hugged his muscled…body. On the other hand, I could use a long gallop. “Sure.”
“We’ll pack a lunch. I’ll show you the sights.”
“What does that mean, the best corn fields in the county?”
“No, I’ll give you the deluxe tour. Take you to see milo.”
Before I could ask who Milo was, a truck pulled up. An older man waved and got out.
“There’s Fred,” Malcolm said. “He’s bringing me some lumber.” He walked to the front of the barn.
“Got it right here,” Fred said, gesturing toward the back of his truck. He peered down the aisle. “Who you hidin’ in there? That Brooke?”
I brushed off my hands and went out. In the past, I would have ignored him, but that didn’t seem right anymore.
“I’m Vi,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re the New Yorker. Melba said she saw you in the store the other morning’.” He turned to Malcolm, who looked amused. “Where you want it?”
They walked to the back of the truck, and I followed. As if I cared about a load of lumber, but I was curious what it was for, especially if the work might involve me. There were long pieces that looked like fence rails hanging well beyond the tailgate.
“Nice flag, Fred. Those Melba’s?” Malcolm asked. He pointed at something on the back of the load.
Fred chuckled. “No. Found them down by the creek. My bull was wearing ‘em.”
The granola I’d had for breakfast threatened to recycle itself.
Fred yanked my red panties off the end of a two by six. “Nice, huh? Can’t imagine how they got there. Kids, I guess.”
Malcolm crooked a skeptical brow. He didn’t look at me, thankfully, and I went back to work before they could see I’d turned as red as my panties.
No sooner had I snapped a lead line on Cali to take her out the back door to stretch her legs, than another truck pulled up. Malcolm and Fred were unloading the lumber near the shed on the other side of the barn. A moment later, I recognized JJ’s voice talking to them, laughing. Shit. There was nowhere to go except the riding arena or the field where the manure spreader still sat. Instead, I led her out the front and up the driveway toward the house. There, I stopped and let her pick at grass along the edge of the lawn. I couldn’t see JJ’s truck, so after a while decided it must be safe to go back to the barn.
Wrong. Malcolm and JJ walked out to meet me. Malcolm looked stiff, unhappy. JJ ambled, all loose-limbed confidence. And there was no escape for me. I should have anticipated this.
“I was going to introduce JJ,” Malcolm said, “but it appears you’ve already met.”
Every swear word I knew whipped through my head, but I couldn’t form a coherent thought or statement out of them. I already knew going out with JJ had been a huge mistake, but I hadn’t come close to thinking through the implications.
“Yeah,” I said, and kept Cali walking. Not very intelligent, but all I wanted was to get away, to not get caught in the crossfire between the two men. I’d been right to suspect bad blood between them. The tension in the air might have been sparked by my unwise choice, but it clearly had existed long before I showed up.
&nb
sp; JJ rocked back on his heels. “Oh, yeah,” he said as I walked away. “We’ve met. Mac, you want to have some fun, just get a few drinks into this one. She’ll be slicker’n a hound’s tooth in no time.”
I stopped.
“Ain’t that right, Slick?”
I felt my spine straighten and shoulders square as I turned to face him. He lit a cigarette, and I wondered how I’d missed the menace in him before. Noire had known. She came trotting across the cow pasture just then, slathered in creek muck. The moment she became aware of JJ, she stopped, lowered her head, and quit wagging her tail.
Malcolm’s face was unreadable. Pissed probably didn’t cover what he felt. I wasn’t sure whether the low growl I heard came from him or my dog.
“Too bad about your horse,” JJ said, flicking ash off to the side. “Nothin’ like that ever happened on my watch. Guess you been distracted.” He took a deep pull from the cigarette and let his gaze fall on Malcolm. “What with Norman, and all.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” I said. Pretty lame, but it was all I could think of—besides screaming—and that wouldn’t help.
“Ain’t interested in talking,” JJ said. “None of us are.” He punched Malcolm in the shoulder. “Us boys all want the same thing from a pretty girl, right Mac? Never had nothin’ to do with talking.” He grinned, but there was no smile on his face.
Malcolm said nothing. He stared at me, hands curled into fists at his sides. I could have sunk into the ground. God, I was stupid. Stupid, dim, brainless.
“Yep, we’re all the same,” JJ rambled. “You give ol’ Mac here half a chance, and he’ll take you for a nice ride, too. That’s a promise. Maybe even down to the river, ‘cept I don’t think that’s his style.”
Could this get any worse?
Malcolm finally forced sound past his clenched jaw. “I think it’s time for you to leave, JJ.”
Candace Carrabus - Dreamhorse 01 - On the Buckle Page 12