Both men spoke at once. Vic held up her hand. “Mr. Jackson, Mr. Millhouse, I suggest you do it, because Mr. Whitten is not going to put up with shoddy workmanship, and I am not going to put up with tantrums from any more damned males today. I’ve had it up to here with testosterone. Do I make myself clear?”
Both men stared at her, then looked at each other and nodded slowly.
“May I suggest you get back to work—both of you,” Vic said. “You’ve got at least an hour of daylight left.”
The two men shared a look that damned to eternity the weirdness of females. They walked to the truck, climbed in and drove off up the hill.
After a few moments, Vic turned to go back into the barn and jumped. A man sat astride a large and very dusty motorcycle beside her truck. Vic sensed in that instant how alone she was out here without Albert or Angie or any of the horse owners.
“Where did you come from?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “I didn’t hear the motorcycle.”
“I rode up while those men in the truck were driving down. Must have covered the sound.”
“That was five minutes ago. What have you been doing since?” So he’d waited silently until she was completely alone? Disquieting.
“Waiting for you to have time to talk to me.”
The man had an accent of some sort. “Irish?” she asked.
He grinned, showing a mouthful of incredible white teeth and a couple of dimples that made her heart lurch. “I’m a Scot,” he said. “From up Oban way.”
“Do you have a name?”
He climbed off his motorcycle and walked toward her. She backed up a step.
“Name’s Jamey McLachlan, lass. And I want a job.”
CHAPTER TWO
“JOB? WHAT SORT OF JOB do you want?” Vic asked.
Jamey McLachlan took another step toward her, apparently noticed her uneasiness and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“General dogsbody,” he continued. “I can clean stalls, feed, water, exercise horses—”
“Did you say exercise horses?”
He nodded. “I can ride anything on four legs.”
“Oh, you can, can you?”
“Absolutely.” He leaned against the side of Vic’s truck, crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles. He looked supremely confident.
Vic took her time studying him. He was not more than an inch taller than she—five ten at most—and weighed perhaps ten pounds more, if that. He looked to be all muscle, but not the rippling weight-lifter kind. He was whipcord thin.
His jeans looked dusty and worn, but expensive—European, black and skintight. She dragged her eyes away from the very obvious bulge at his crotch where the fabric had worn thin and slightly gray.
His blue-black hair had been combed back. He wore it longer than Mike did—but then, this man probably couldn’t afford a barber’s shears often.
He had on a black T-shirt under a leather bomber jacket that was creased and cracked with age. And dusty paddock boots, similar to her own.
She also noted with a slight frisson of disquiet that he wore black leather gloves and a small gold stud in his right ear. His skin was dark—outdoor skin, the kind a ski instructor might have. Or a farmer. Or a drifter who rode a motorcycle without a helmet.
He watched her out of eyes as black as that damned stallion’s.
“Well, want me to strip?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Way you’re looking at me, might as well stand here in my birthday suit. Do you like what you see?”
“What I see is an overage drifter driving an expensive British motorcycle. You wouldn’t happen to have something like a passport, would you? God forbid you’d have a green card.”
“Passport I’ve got. Green card? No. I don’t expect to stay anyplace long enough to need one.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Because I’m having a midlife crisis. I’ve left my stepfather’s farm in Scotland to work my way around the world from horse farm to horse farm. I want to see all of it—the world, that is. I bought the BMW in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s cheaper than a car, and I like sleeping rough.”
“So you just show up here? Just driving down the road and, voilà, here you are?”
He grinned. “You’re too suspicious for your own good.” He reached his left hand into the pocket of his jacket.
Vic eyed his hand suspiciously.
He caught her glance and grinned that wild grin again. “I’m not reaching for my forty-five. We Scots don’t go in much for firearms, and a man can’t hide a dirk or a claymore in this getup without doing himself an injury.” He brought out a white envelope. “Here, read it. You’ll know why I showed up here.”
Vic reached out with two fingers and took the envelope, looked at it and blinked. She glanced up at him. “It’s addressed to me.”
“Yes.”
“What’s it say?”
“Read it. It won’t bite.”
She pulled the single sheet of fine vellum from the envelope and read. “Dear Vic,” the letter began. “This is to introduce a good friend of mine, Jamey McLachlan. I’ve known him for twenty years and trust him implicitly. He’s a good man, even if he has gone a bit middle-aged crazy at the moment. He’s got a mad drive to see the world on the back of a motorcycle and a horse. I can vouch for his honesty and his expertise. I hope you can convince him to give up this insane idea of riding himself around the world and get him to come home to Scotland and go back to work training my horses. In the meantime, try to see that he doesn’t starve. Give him a job if you’ve got one. He’s a fine rider and a hard worker. Sincerely, Marshall Dunn.”
“Marshall Dunn?” Vic looked up. “I haven’t heard from him in five years. How do I know this is genuine?”
“You don’t. But it is and so am I. Call him up and check it out if you like. I may not stay more than a month or so, but I’m hoping you could use some help. Am I right?”
“How much?”
“A bed, money to pay for my food and the occasional beer—although what you Americans call beer is definitely not the beverage I’m used to—and if I serve you well, a decent reference to one of your friends when I leave.”
“Will you stay for two months if it works out between us?”
Jamey caught his breath. He’d been making do with small duplicities, but this would be his first big lie. He didn’t like lying to her. She was a fine woman, tall and handsome and bright and full of spirit.
He found the challenge in her direct gaze disturbing. He did not need the additional complication of actually responding to her physically. He forced his mind back to his negotiations.
“My guess is you’ve got more to do here than you’ve hands for,” he continued. Nobody should be running a place this big alone, or even with one or two people. He had ten to fifteen working for him at home even in the lean times. Most of them were his uncles and his cousins, but they still required salaries. He steeled himself and said, “All right, if we work out, I’ll stay two months. But there’s something you need to know.”
“Uh-huh, thought so. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?”
“Indeed there is. This is mine.” He pulled his right hand from the pocket of his jeans, held it in front of him and peeled the glove off with his left.
Vic looked at the crooked fingers, the scarred and mangled skin, and felt her stomach lurch. She fought to keep from shuddering.
“Sorry, should have warned you. It’s not pretty,” he said with an edge of bitterness. “I can exercise any horse you choose, ride them over fences, work them on the lunge line and on the flat. What I can’t do is the fine rein work—the tricky little dressage stuff that makes a decent horse into a brilliant one. I haven’t the motor skills any longer, do you see?” He slid the glove back over his hand.
Vic nodded at the hand. “How did it happen?”
“Got it caught in a hay baler. By the time they got the thing stopped and unwound me f
rom it, it had pretty much mangled my hand and arm. The doctors spent a good long time putting everything back in place, but there’s only so much they can do. I’ve done physical therapy now for two years. This is as good as it’s going to get.”
“So you wear your gloves.
“Okay. I pick the horse. You have about thirty minutes to ride before we have to turn on the lights in the arena. If you can ride to suit me, and if you’re willing to sleep in the groom’s room behind the hayloft and work like a navvy on anything and everything I put you to, then...”
“Then, lass?”
She held out her right hand. “Then we shake on it.”
This time he was the one caught off guard. He pulled his wounded hand in its black glove out of his jeans pocket and extended it.
Looking resolutely into his eyes, Vic took his mangled hand and shook it. “After that,” she said, “it’s boss-lass to you, laddie.”
As they passed the office door, the telephone rang. “Oh, bother,” Vic said. “Look, go pick a horse—any horse you like. You’ll find a clean saddle pad in the tack room and there’s a saddle you can use on the wash rack. I’ll find you a bridle when I get there.”
“That’s all right. I brought my own saddle on the back of the motorcycle.”
She nodded as she answered the telephone.
“Vic, it’s Kevin.”
“Kevin, how is Angie?”
“Arm in a sling, mad as a wet hen that she’s let you down, depressed as hell and half-drunk on dope.” He sounded almost bitter. “I should have called yesterday, but I had three babies to deliver.”
It didn’t sound like Kevin at all. He was known to all and sundry as Saint Kevin, Angie’s obstetrician/gynecologist husband who provided Angie with unlimited funds, supported her at every turn and never lost his cool no matter how exasperating she became.
“I’m so sorry it happened, Kevin.”
“She says it was her fault. Not thinking.” He snorted. “Thinking too damned much is more like it.”
“Oh?”
Vic heard his sigh down the phone lines. “Sorry, Vic, got to go. Angie’ll be out sometime tomorrow to pick up her car.” He hung up.
Vic sat with her hand on the receiver. Now what was that about? Trouble in paradise?
Maybe that was why Angie had fallen off a horse that normally would not have been able to buck off a four-year-old child.
Well, Vic thought, pulling herself up, it was none of her business. She had enough on her plate without playing marriage counselor to Kevin and Angie. She went to find Jamey McLachlan.
Angie Womack’s big jumper, Trust Fund, stood on the wash rack with his saddle in place, but Jamey was nowhere to be found. Vic listened for the sound of his footsteps and heard...nothing. Even Mr. Miracle had gone silent. Good Lord! Surely the man had sense enough not to mess with a strange stallion, especially one the size of an eighteen-wheeler.
She ran outside toward the stallion paddock. If that damned man had gotten himself trampled to death, she’d kill him.
In the gathering twilight she saw them, so black that only Jamey’s olive skin glowed in the twilight. She stood still and watched. The stallion—all nineteen hands and two thousand pounds of him—leaned against Jamey, his huge head drooped and braced against Jamey’s knee, his eyes half-closed in ecstasy as Jamey scratched behind his ears as though the horse were some kind of big puppy.
Under his breath Jamey whistled softly, some strange Celtic melody that seemed to flow from his bones and into the stallion’s. Vic felt the sound melt into her as well and shivered with it.
He raised his head, saw her, stopped his whistling and smiled into her eyes. “Shall I bring this big lad in for you, lass? Ah...boss-lass?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Vic said. “His lead line is on the gate hook. I’ll give you a hand.”
“No need. I’ve got it.”
“You’d better hook the chain over his nose. He’s a handful.”
“He’s just a big old boy. Gentle as a buffalo.” Jamey picked up the end of the shank and walked beside the stallion’s shoulder with the shank hanging loosely from his hand. The stallion behaved almost like a hound at heel.
Vic opened the gate and stood aside. She watched man and horse wander by. The stallion held his nose against the man’s shoulder.
“Come on, old son,” Jamey murmured. “Time to settle in for the night.” Vic followed at a safe distance until the stallion moved meekly into his stall and turned around to bump Jamey gently with his muzzle.
“Now be quiet,” Jamey said. “You’ll get your dinner soon enough. And the girls when you’re ready for them.”
“That’s amazing.”
“It’s a gift. I’ve always had it. Animals like me. Don’t know why. Now, shall we try that big gelding over a few fences?”
Vic nodded.
After watching him work the big jumper for forty-five minutes under lights in the newly covered arena, Vic knew she’d found her exercise rider.
Later they walked the aisle silently side by side feeding, haying and filling water buckets. Vic felt as though she’d known this man all her life.
He was handsome as Lucifer himself. She could practically smell the pheromones he exuded. He undoubtedly had scores of beautiful younger women falling all over him. To him she was no doubt only an employer, but she was aware of him, his maleness, in a way she had never been with any man. Certainly not with her deceased husband. Given Frank’s nature, his size and his irascibility, that wasn’t surprising.
There was an aura of raw sexuality about Jamey McLachlan. He was like the stallion, except that his calls were silent. Whatever he had, she had tuned into it, even though she should be too old and wise a mare to go into heat the minute an attractive stallion nickered at her.
If she wasn’t very very careful, she would wind up making a fool of herself.
HE SLID THE EMPTY HAY cart into the storage area and turned to her. “So, where’s this groom’s room? I could use a shower. Must smell like a goat.”
Actually, Vic thought, he smelled of male sweat and dust, not at all a bad scent. “Up the ladder, I’m afraid. Behind the hayloft. We haven’t used it since our last working student a couple of years ago. It’ll be pretty filthy.”
“Let’s see. Show me?”
Vic reached for the ladder to the loft and pulled herself up, all too aware of the seat of her dusty jeans rising to his eye level and above. She climbed as quickly as she could, stepping off onto the hay platform fenced off from the main floor with a barrier to keep children and pets from falling—her new nephew-in-law’s idea. She flicked the light switch on the wall, revealing neat bales of hay stacked to the ceiling.
She felt him behind her before she turned to look at him.
He hooked his thumbs into his waistband. His injured hand hung at an awkward angle.
Vic looked away quickly. “Let’s see how bad that room is.” She walked around the nearest bale to a door partly concealed in the wall. It was unlocked and opened with a squeal like an annoyed hog. Vic reached inside and turned on the light. “Oh, dear!”
He followed her inside and made a “humph” sound that seemed half annoyance and half laugh.
Vic turned to face him. “I’m so sorry. There’s no way you can stay here.”
“Don’t know why not—the mice seemed to have enjoyed it immensely.” He grinned at her.
The floor was littered with mouse droppings. Vic had expected dust and festoons of cobwebs. But somehow despite all the careful caulking, the steel wool behind the electrical outlets, the tightly cased storm window, the mice had managed to slip in. No doubt they had scattered when they heard the squeal of the door.
The floor was tiled in a nondescript gray-brown, and the sofa had been decently covered with brown tweed before it became a maternity ward for generations of field mice looking to escape from the winter’s chill. There was a student desk and chair, a green-shaded lamp, the usual end and side tables, a single bed st
ripped to the mattress and covered in a thick plastic protector. The mice had made short work of the plastic.
Vic raised her hands and dropped them in defeat. “This will have to be completely fumigated, repainted and the furniture replaced before you can stay here. I’m not sure a grenade and a flame thrower would help much.” She turned to him. “I should have known—it’s just that there’s so much to do that the things that aren’t critical slip into the background.”
“It’s a barn, and where there are barns, there are mice. And probably rats and snakes, as well. Comes with the territory.” He seemed remarkably cheerful.
Vic was embarrassed. What had she been thinking when she’d offered him the room without checking it first? “Let’s get out of here. I’ll call one of the local motels and book you a room for the next couple of nights until I can make this place livable.” She glanced over her shoulder as she reached for the light switch. “If that’s possible.”
“Don’t worry about a motel. I’ll bed down in the hayloft.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” He probably didn’t want to admit he hadn’t enough money for a motel. She’d have to think of something else.
She turned off the hayloft light and waited while he slung his body over the edge of the loft and started down the ladder. He used his damaged hand casually, but carefully, not relying on it to hold his weight.
She followed. Two rungs from the bottom she felt his hands encircle her waist, felt herself lifted from the ladder and set on the floor. She caught her breath at the suddenness of it.
He was looking at her, one eyebrow cocked. “I’ve slept rough a good many nights.” He looked down at his body. “It’s the shower I’ll miss. Bit too cold in February to rinse off with the wash-rack hose.”
Vic gulped at the thought of Jamey McLachlan standing naked on the wash rack.
“Oh, no. You’d catch pneumonia.” Then, before she thought the words, she spoke them, and wished a moment later she could take them back. “Look, I’ve got a perfectly good spare bedroom under the eaves, and it has its own bath—plenty of hot water. And if you don’t mind sandwiches, I could fix us both something to eat. It’s quite a way to the nearest fast-food place.”
Mr. Miracle (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 2