by Quinn Wilder
The world outside was hazy—the colors muted by the morning mist that floated a few feet off the ground. The sun was just beginning to peep over the hills to the east.
The whole scene was wrapped in an unearthly stillness. The stables, the mist, the far-off hills could have been a painting, except for a sudden flash of movement. Storm. Racing, his tail and head high, to the far reaches of the side paddock, flicking his heels, joyously, and racing back again, celebrating his freedom. He looked like a young colt. The horse was fourteen years old.
She watched, mesmerized by his beauty, his greatness, his magnificence of spirit. And then, startled, she wondered how he'd got out. Last night, she had made a mournful tour of the stables, and he had been in, irritable and restive.
For a moment she felt afraid. He might have kicked his way through the door. Or managed somehow to jump over the lower gate of his box stall. He might be hurt...
He neighed again, and she smiled ruefully. It was not the sound of an injured horse. In fact, Storm was acting very much as if he was showing off, which he enjoyed doing immensely, when he wasn't in one of his baffling, uncontrollable moods.
She caught a movement in the shadow of the stable, and focused on it. The figure was unmistakable. Dace Stanton was leaning casually in the doorframe of the open box stall, his thumbs hooked in his pockets.
He had let out her horse! The man was really insufferable. Hastily she turned from the window and to her wardrobe. Carelessly, she pulled a gray hooded sweatshirt over the sheerness of her shortie summer pyjamas. She crammed her uncooperative limbs impatiently into a pair of faded jeans, gave the wild tangle of her hair a shake and a finger-comb, then grabbed her cane and crashed out of her room.
He was still there when she rounded the corner, still standing with one big shoulder braced against the doorframe, his back to her.
4 'What are you doing here?" she snapped. She was irritated because she had come. The man did have an undeniable chemistry. In the safe haven of her room she could picture him as an utter idiot. In the light of reality the man couldn't have looked like an idiot if he rode a horse backward with a dunce's cap on his head.
He turned and glanced over his shoulder at her. His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his hat, which he touched briefly with his fingers.
"Morning, ma'am." For a moment longer than could have been considered proper his eyes rested on the tiny silk bow and the lacy neck of her pyjamas that showed under the V of her sweatshirt. Then he turned and looked back at the antics of the horse.
"Did you let this horse out of his stall?" she demanded.
"Yes, ma'am, I did. He didn't seem very happy inside."
"I don't see that that is any concern of yours," she said waspishly. "Are you in charge of unhappy animals? If you went to a zoo would you be letting all the tigers out?"
"Probably," Dace said, his unperturbed tone perturbing her unbearably.
"We keep Storm inside at night because we are trying to get him accustomed to confined spaces. At shows he has to be stabled in a confined area."
"Exactly how long have you been trying that?" Dace asked, unimpressed. His eyes drifted to her face.
She bit her Up. Long enough to know it wasn't working. "I asked you what you were doing here," she reminded him.
"I wanted to have a closer look at the horse."
Her heart jumped and she scanned that impassive face for some clue of what had brought him out here at dawn's first light. His face told her nothing, though for some reason she could have looked at it for a long, long time. Instead, she made herself appear to fasten her attention to Storm. She
noticed there was a morning-fresh scent clinging to Dace that was nearly as perturbing as her inability to get a rise out of him.
Storm, in one of those moments of affection that had won her devotion to him, despite the other problems with his personality, suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, and lifted his nose. Then, having caught her scent, he wheeled back to the stable, came at them at a dead run, screeched to a halt in front of them, and dropped his large head against her bosom.
She scratched his ears obediently, and a sigh of contentment escaped her. After a moment, she looked up to see Dace Stanton studying her, something in his eyes that she had not seen before. Puzzlement? And a kind of empathy...
She was sorry she had let her guard down, sorry that a tenderness had slipped out of her, and that he had seen it. If she was soft, people took it as an invitation to pity her. If she was abrasive and hard they kept their distance and she kept some remnant of her dignity. She shoved Storm away from her, and glared challengingly at Dace. His expression was bland.
"I don't suppose you've changed your mind, have you?" she asked crisply. If he thought she was going to beg him to ride her horse, he had another think coming. Arrogant cowboy. Acting as if he owned the place. Still, seeing Dace and Storm together in such close proximity did reawaken that same overwhelmingly strong sense of lightness that she had been struck by when she had seen Dace jump for the first time.
"He's a beautiful animal," Dace commented, not answering her question at all.
"On his good days, he's very, very good." She sighed. "But on his bad days he's horrid."
Dace laughed at her paraphrasing of the old nursery rhyme. She was caught unprepared for the sound of his laughter. It melted into the magic of the morning, rolling like the mist, putting the brightness of the rising sun to shame.
She looked at him. She hadn't realized there was an ever-present hurt lurking in the cool pools of his eyes, until the laughter washed it away. Wounded, she guessed, and was somehow unsurprised. For a reason she didn't know, some unspeakable wound seemed to be an element in greatness of spirit. She suspected that Storm, too, was irrevocably scarred by some past event.
Her eyes flicked from the horse to the man, and back again. Again, she could feel it, the sizzle of their energy, the potential of them as a team. She wanted it so badly that she wanted to scream, to shake him, to make him see. Some of the discipline of her long years of working with skittish horses came to her aid now. No fast movements. Quiet. Calm. No rushing fences.
Besides, it did not do to want things too badly. She had no intention of giving Dace Stanton that kind of power over her.
"I thought I might have a look at the room that goes with the job you offered me."
"Certainly," she said, trying desperately to keep a rein on her eagerness. One false move, and she suspected he'd bolt. She stole a look at his face as they passed through the doors into the dimness of the stable. He didn't want to be here. But he was. She did not dare even ask him why.
"The suite is through that door, at the top of those stairs. Nobody's using it. It was for my head groom."
"What happened to the groom?" Dace had moved very close to her, his eyes scanning her face.
She could see, reflected in his eyes, that her hurt was obvious to him, and it embarrassed her. She schooled her face into careful uncaring. "He was made a better offer."
She didn't add that the offer had been made by her ex-fiance.
Dace nodded slowly but his eyes didn't leave her face, seeing things she did not want him to see. Then he turned from her abruptly, and opened the door, standing back for her to precede him.
A feeling of humiliation washed through her. She wished she could just drop through the floor. She wished she were back in her bed, her covers pulled over her head.
"Stairs are very difficult for me," she choked out, her eyes glued on a piece of straw on the floor. Not impossible, but difficult. Besides, she hated the way she looked trying to mount stairs. Her father had installed a lift chair for her in the house.
Because she wasn't looking at him, she didn't even see him coming.
Suddenly, he was just there in front of her. One strong arm closed like a steel band around her shoulders, and the other slid under her knees. The cane clattered from her hands and in a split second she was being cradled against the hard wall of his chest, and she looked
into his eyes, only to find an expression in them that seemed as astounded as her own.
'Tut me down/' she demanded. "I've seen the room. I "
He ignored her, went up the stairs. The exertion did not change his breathing, though to her intense embarrassment her breaths were coming in quick, indignant little gasps.
"Put me down this instant or I'll "
"You can't fire me. I don't even work for you yet."
That "yet" stole her protests momentarily. She'd lost a weapon. He'd guessed that no matter how angry he made her she wouldn't pull rank on Sloan. So that "yet" might indicate he was considering working for her, directly.
Unfortunately as soon as she stopped protesting she became aware of the implacable hardness of his chest, and aware of the rock-hard rippling of the muscled arm beneath her thighs.
She banged his chest angrily with the flat of her hand.
He went to the top of the stairs, strode across the sun-splashed room and dumped her unceremoniously on the couch. He took in the red stain of her cheeks with amusement.
Her fists curled into balls of impotent rage at her sides. "I hate being touched," she stormed.
He looked totally unintimidated. "Every man's nightmare," he commented dryly. "A beautiful woman who hates to be touched."
"I didn't mean it like that," she gasped, flustered.
"Oh. So you do like to be touched." His eyebrows had arched wickedly upward.
"Don't you mock me. You know exactly what I
"I don't have a clue what you're talking about," he denied flatly.
"You would never treat a woman who didn't limp with such audacious familiarity. I will not be treated like an invalid," she clarified, her voice an angry hiss.
To her chagrin, he laughed. He actually threw back his head, and laughed into the face of her rage.
He finally managed to stop laughing, and looked at her solemnly. Then suddenly he stooped and took her chin, forcing her to meet the steady, stripping gaze of his eyes.
"As a matter of fact, Miss Copperthorne, I have been known to be audaciously familiar with members of the female persuasion. My past is dotted with incidents of audacious familiarity, In fact, I think I was only in grade three the first time I stole a kiss from a girl I didn't even know..."
"Oh, stop it," she demanded, trying to squirm away from his hold. He held fast to her chin, forcing her to look into those eyes that danced with a light of pure devilment. For a moment she was dreadfully afraid he was planning to demonstrate his stolen kiss technique. She was willing to bet it had improved since the third grade. What a repulsive thought. The man was a caveman. Why on earth was her heart hammering like that?
Then the light of debauchery died in his eyes. "As for treating you like an invalid, I forgot entirely you were an 'invalid,' which by the way is your choice of phrase, not mine. That's why I opened the door for you, and expected you to go up first. Nobody who is with you for any length of time is going to give much thought to your leg or
your limp. I find it keeps me pretty busy just watching out for your tongue."
Her mouth fell open in shock. She glared at him. She slapped his hand away from her chin, folded her arms across her chest and looked coldly over his shoulder.
"Given the circumstances, I think I've been more than civil to you this morning."
He straightened and looked around the room with interest. And then his eyes came back to rest on her. "Do you think you managed to be civil for ten or twenty seconds because it's your nature, or because you want something?" he asked softly.
She snapped him a coldly killing look before looking away again. She shoved her nose toward the ceiling. "It's my nature."
She wanted to murder him when he laughed again. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he was fired, but no, that would be too good for him, and besides, he'd already pointed out that he didn't work for her "yet." She decided she wanted to tie him down on an anthill and cover him with honey. Oh, she detested the fact that he was absolutely right. She should really try to be nice. She needed him. And hated needing him.
He turned his broad back on her and went to explore the small apartment.
She watched him narrowly as he strode from room to room. She willed herself to feel only professional calm, to view him with detachment. The man who might give her back her dream, ride her horse... but it wasn't working. When he'd touched her, carried her in those magnificently strong arms, the physical side of her had surged to life, tingling with an electrical awareness of his masculinity. In-
tellectuaily, she did her utmost to cut that off, and yet she could not prevent herself from appreciating the clean lines of his leg muscles in his molded jeans, the broad sweep of his shoulders, the incredible midnight blue of his eyes. And something even stronger, and certainly more distressing, than anger twinged deep within her.
What was it? Yearning? Desire? The ache of repressed loneliness? Whatever it was, it was dangerous.
She forced herself to think of Lionel, to remember his treachery in agonizing detail. She held two vivid pictures of him in her mind; one of his flushed and joyous face, when he'd pulled her from Storm after the best ride they'd ever had. In that delirious moment, swept away by the emotion of the victory, he'd asked her to marry him.
It had seemed natural enough at the time. They had spent nearly every waking moment in each other's company. They had shared the same obsession; the same goals; the same interests. Everything they had done revolved around horses, competitions, the far-off goal of places on the Olympic team. It didn't take the pain away to know, now, that what they had felt was not so much a passion for each other as a residue of passion from the sport, and its inherent exhilaration.
Her other picture of Lionel had been snapped with her mind two short weeks later. He had visited her in the hospital, but his eyes had had a look in them she could not bear. It wasn't just sympathy, it was revulsion. He was an athlete, incapable of transcending his world of strength and movement to find out if they had shared anything else.
She would never forget Lionel letting a look of unguarded horror slide over the perfection of his good looks, when she had explained what they would do to her hip, when she'd told him bluntly she would always use a cane, when she'd told him, her voice faltering, that she would never ride a horse again. She had not even been able to tell him the rest.
He had come a few more times, dutifully. She hated him for that—for making her feel as if she was just a pair of legs, and without them her life was over, she was worthless.
Dace Stanton came out of the back reaches of the apartment, and she eyed him, satisfied that she had the maturity to deal swiftly with such a juvenile thing as a physical attraction before it developed into anything that could hurt her again. Besides, he'd probably dismissed her handicap with such ease precisely because he didn't think of her as the kind of woman who would interest him physically.
"We could talk," he conceded.
Lionel and his betrayal were still fresh in her brain. "Yes," she said, "we could talk." That much did not require trust.
He moved toward her as though he might actually try to pick her up again. She quelled him with a look.
"I'll wait for you outside," he stated.
"Naturally, I'll want you to sign a contract." They were sitting on the flagstoned breakfast terrace overlooking the pool.
Dace managed to make the area look like a set from a movie—he was too large, and too real
somehow for white cane furniture and plump yellow pillows. She was forced to notice, again, that he was a man unintimidated by his surroundings. He seemed infinitely at home with the opulence of cut-glass flower vases on rattan tables, with the feel of fine Wedgwood in his big, work-roughened hands.
She was oddly taken with the look of that strong, weathered hand against fine porcelain. There was a fineness in his movement, in the ease with which he handled the delicate bone china, that defied his large size. If his hands were this good on the reins, this light, this
sensitive...
A renegade thought blasted through her brain, of how those hands might feel against the porcelain of a woman's skin, how they might guide the reins of her passion...
"I'm not signing a contract," he said. His voice was smooth and sure. As if this was not even open to negotiation.
She pulled her gaze from his hands, and met his eyes. They were watchful, but unworried, on her face.
"I need a contract," she insisted. "I'll be investing a great deal of time and money in you. I think I should be able to protect myself against your just up and walking away."
His eyes never left her face. "Miss Copperthorne," he said softly and solemnly, "when a man feels like up and walking away, you're best to just let him. You see, you can't own a man's soul. His spirit. He can only give you that freely. And, if he isn't giving that part of himself to you, there's no point having him. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Unfortunately, she did. She realized she still wanted guarantees from life. She should know better by how.
Still, she studied him with a trace of skepticism. "Why are you doing this? Frankly, you seem more interested in the apartment than the work that we'll be doing."
He was here, and he'd said he'd do it, but she didn't feel as if he was offering her his heart and soul.
"For the pleasure of your company?" he parried.
She flushed. Why was she doing this? Exposing herself to the ruthless digs of this overpowering cowboy?
"Does it matter why?" he asked softly. "Maybe for the money. Maybe for the change. Maybe for the challenge. Maybe it is for the apartment."
She felt doubtful and must have looked it.
"Miss Copperthorne, this was your great idea in the first place. I like the horse, and I'm willing to give this an honest try. I'll give you my word on that, and my handshake. In that world," he nodded off past the hedges toward the dust rising from the corrals, "that's the best kind of contract to have. I can usually tell just about everything I need to know from the way a person shakes hands."