by Norah Wilson
“Horse won’t like it.”
“This one will.”
“Which one?”
“Cosmo.”
Jim eyed her, considering. “Think it’ll help?”
Lauren explained her theory, then went on to tell him she’d made a bet with Cal and needed to be ready to test her theory by noon. When she was done, Jim’s eyes had narrowed thoughtfully.
“You seen this work before?”
“Well, no, not personally, but I understand it’s worked for other horses.”
“What if it doesn’t work for Cosmo?”
“Then I lose the bet.” A jolt of raw excitement knifed through her at the thought. It wouldn’t really feel like losing.
She pushed the traitorous thought aside. She wanted to win this bet. Not that she genuinely expected to learn anything from Cal to help her with the investigation. She’d admitted that much to herself last night, just before slamming the door on that line of thought. She didn’t want to analyze why it was so important for him to open up to her.
Jim’s voice yanked her back. “Well, I guess I’d better get busy then, hadn’t I? You fetch a bridle and I’ll get my kit.”
Cal leaned his chair back with a sigh as Delia removed his plate from the worn pine table. “That was a fine meal, Delia.”
Across the table from him, Lauren added her compliments. “Well, for two people who enjoyed dinner so much, neither of you cleaned your plates very well,” Delia observed tartly.
“We’re in a bit of a hurry, that’s all,” said Cal.
“I know,” she replied, gesturing to the empty dining room. “The whole bunch of them have gone out to the corral to see if Lauren’s cure works.”
Shit. Cal’s chair clumped back onto all fours. “Everyone knows about the bet?”
She fingered her napkin. “I mentioned it to Jim Mallory.”
“Jim?” Was the whole ranch speculating about them? Cal waited for Delia to move away before continuing. “Chrissakes, why?”
“I needed his help with the bridle.”
A ghastly thought struck him. “Oh hell, you haven’t devised some wicked contraption to curb poor Cosmo, have you?”
Her mouth fell open, then snapped shut. “God, no!”
Cal sat back in his chair. “But you did modify the bridle?”
“He still has full range of motion,” she assured him. “He’ll be able to toss his head just fine, if he’s so inclined.”
Well, that was a relief. But he still couldn’t relax. He had one more question. “Does that mean the whole ranch knows what’s riding on this little wager?”
“No, of course not…”
“Despite our necking in the barn, I’ve got this quaint idea that what passes between a man and a woman oughtta be private.”
“As do I.” She leaned closer, her eyes flashing. “You think I’d purposely expose myself to that kind of attention?”
Marlena had. Damn, but it still rankled. He thought he was over that shit. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just my experience being what it is…”
“No, I’m sorry.” She cut off his apology. “I shouldn’t have taken offense.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “So are we ready to do this?”
“I’m ready.”
Delia wasn’t lying. Everyone was there. Cal and Lauren crossed the paddock together. Lauren paused at the stable door.
“You want to ride him?” she offered.
“No, you go ahead.” He scanned the spectators. “Need some help to saddle him up?”
Jim Mallory stepped out of the barn. “He’s already saddled and wonderin’ what all the fuss is about. Go git him, Lauren.”
Lauren disappeared into the dark doorway, and Jim headed for the paddock fence to take up his favorite leaning posture. Cal followed. “I hear you been conspiring against me, old man.”
Jim was predictably unruffled by the complaint. “I think she might be on to somethin’. This just might work.”
“What’s she rigged up?”
Jim bent one knee and hooked the heel of his boot on a rung. Comfortable, he reached for his tobacco pouch to roll a smoke. “She swore me to secrecy. You’ll have to wait and see.”
He didn’t have to wait long. Lauren emerged first into the sunlight, but all eyes were on the bay she was leading.
“What the hell?”
His prize Tennessee walker was wearing…Christ, what was he wearing? They looked like some kind of goggles. They covered the sides of the eyes like blinders but arched up clear around the top of each eye.
Lauren sprang into the saddle. With a glance at Cal, she gave the gelding a pat on the neck, then walked him around the paddock. Fifteen minutes later, she’d put him through his paces. He’d tossed his head a few times, but Cal had to concede it was normal tossing, not his usual uncontrollable thrashing.
The crowd, conceding there’d be nothing more to see, dissipated.
As Lauren rode up and dismounted, Cal wasn’t sure how he felt. Jim had no such ambivalence. He clapped Lauren on the back, his weathered face splitting into a wide, tobacco-stained grin.
“You done it, girl! You fixed ’im.”
Lauren’s smile was just as wide as Jim’s, but considerably toothier. “I didn’t really fix him. Take the blinders off and he’ll go right back to tossing his head. It’s a photic thing.”
Cal lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, a photic thing.”
Jim took the reins from Lauren. “That means the effect light has on somethin’,” he said helpfully as he passed Cal.
“I knew that!” he called after Jim. He turned back to Lauren to see laughter dancing in her blue eyes. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t, but I figured it out when I saw Cosmo’s shades.”
“It’s a lot like the sneeze impulse we humans get when we look into the sun.”
“Makes sense. So Cosmo’s really back in business?”
She nodded. “With the shades, as you called them. And I imagine you could work him after sunset without them.”
“So it looks like you win,” he said, his gut clenching at the thought. Damn, how had she known the shades would work?
The memory of how Lauren had handled the scare with Marlena popped into his head. She’d been Johnny-on-the-spot with the medical knowledge that time. Come to think of it, she was an ambulance attendant, an accomplished rider, a writer of erotica, and now a freaking horse whisperer. What else could she do?
“So you’ll talk to me?”
Lauren’s question straightened his spine. Christ, he hoped she wasn’t an amateur shrink too, wanting to dig around in his head. He shook the thought away.
“I’ll make good on the wager, but first tell me, how’d you know the blinders would work?”
She answered with only the merest hesitation. If he hadn’t been studying her face, he might have missed the wariness that crept into her eyes. “I’m a veterinarian,” she said. “Small animals, but I do have some experience with large animals. I did a stint with Agriculture before setting up practice in Halifax.”
“A vet?” Cal inhaled sharply. He couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d hauled off and belted him one.
“Yes, a small-animal vet. I’ve got someone covering my clients right now.”
He pushed his hat back on his head. “I thought you said you were a writer.”
She lifted her chin. “Can’t I be both?”
He ignored her question, but he couldn’t ignore the dismay blossoming in his gut. Somehow, once he’d attached the label of writer to her, he’d imagined some kind of footloose existence for her. She’d come here to do research, hadn’t she? But if she was a veterinarian with a practice waiting for her two-thousand-odd miles away, no way would she hang around here after her little holiday was finished. Suddenly his chest felt tight.
“Well, aren’t you a regular McGyver.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You find that threatening, do you, Cal? That a woman can have multiple
competencies?”
“I don’t find it threatening; I find it pretty damned dodgy,” he shot back. “Why, for instance, didn’t you tell me you were a vet when I first asked you what you did?”
“You didn’t ask me what I did,” she countered. “You asked me what my interest was in your ranch operations. If I’d been interested in my capacity as a veterinarian, I’d have said so.”
Cal took a deep breath. She was right; he’d accused her of conducting market research and she’d replied she was just researching a book. There was absolutely no basis for his anger.
Except that she had concrete ties to the East Coast, responsibilities that would call her home when her holiday, or her research, or whatever the hell it was she was doing here, was done.
His anger dissolved, fear seeping in to take its place. Why should that thought upset him? The whole appeal of an affair with Lauren was the very transience it offered, wasn’t it?
Worried, he did a split-second lust check—did he still want to get her between the sheets, given this new knowledge? His body’s answer was emphatic, and vastly reassuring.
Whew.
“Sorry. Guess I’m a little sore about losing the bet.” He gave her his best good ol’ boy smile. “I had my heart set on winning, as I’m sure you can appreciate.” The way her breathing accelerated made his pulse leap. Maybe they could both get what they wanted. “So where and when would you like to do this little debriefing?”
“I get to choose?”
“You’re the winner; you get to call the shots.”
She licked her upper lip, then bit her lower lip, a gesture Cal was certain was as unconscious as it was sexy.
“What about tonight, in my cabin, after the sunset ride? Or later,” she added, “if you’ve got stuff to do first.”
“After the ride would be fine,” he said, an ironic smile tugging at his lips. “I already cleared my schedule.”
She blushed at that, but held his gaze. “Okay, tonight,” she confirmed, then turned and strode away.
Tonight, he echoed silently as he watched her go.
Lauren’s nerves were stretched to the point of snapping. The sundown ride had been gorgeous but uneventful. Afterward Cal wanted to get his guests settled with Seth for the Friday night bonfire down by the creek, so she’d come back here to wait for him. Big mistake. She was so wired up, her breathing was keeping time with the clock as she paced her living room.
She wiped damp hands on her jeans. Meeting him here after dark was probably a huge mistake. Not that she’d had much choice about the time. If she were going to keep an eye on Marlena, she had to stay vigilant until after nightfall. The murder had taken place during the daytime, and no matter what this…thing…was between her and Cal, she couldn’t forget someone’s life was at stake.
Marlena was alive to see another day. And Cal…
She should have picked a safer location to meet with him. A more neutral location. Why, oh why, had she chosen her cabin?
You know why.
A soft tap at the door arrested her pacing. Taking a steadying breath, she crossed to the door and opened it. Right away she was glad she’d taken a big gulp of air because she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. There in the soft glow of the porch light stood Cal, dressed in fresh jeans and a soft blue chambray shirt. As good as he looked in a Stetson, he looked better without it. His blond hair, still dark now with dampness from the shower, was slicked back to his finely shaped head.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
She stepped back, blushing. “Of course.”
He handed her a bottle of wine she hadn’t noticed he was carrying. “I swiped this from Delia, so I guess it’s decent.”
She eyed the label. “An Australian Shiraz. What’s not to like?”
“I’ll take your word for it. I tend to gravitate to the Canadian lagers myself.”
Lauren grinned. “Shall I open it?”
Cal glanced around the small room. “That’s the general idea. I could use a little Dutch courage.”
She was rummaging in the utensil drawer for a corkscrew when those words jerked her head up. “You’re nervous about this?”
“Maybe a little.” He rolled his shoulders. “I don’t much like talking about myself.”
“So I noticed.” Lauren’s own apprehensions abated in the face of his confession. “It’ll be painless, I promise.”
“I doubt it.”
She’d found the corkscrew and he took it from her, along with the bottle, which he opened with an ease that put the lie to his earlier claims of ignorance. She found two wineglasses, which he filled expertly.
Back in the living room, he sat on the couch and she picked a chair. She took a sip of her wine. “Mmm, very nice.”
“Can we do this backwards? Q & A first, niceties later?”
Lord, he was practically vibrating with tension. She thought briefly about letting him off the hook, but decided he wouldn’t thank her for it. A bet had to be honored.
“Sure. We could do that,” she said instead. “Why don’t you pick it up wherever you want?”
“My mother died when I was five.”
Good gracious! Lauren didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t that. He was going back some. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t even look up from his contemplation of his wine. “I don’t really remember her, except maybe for her voice. Sometimes I think I can remember that.” He swirled the ruby liquid in his glass, as yet untasted. “But the point is, my dad pretty much raised me. He wasn’t mean, I don’t guess, at least not as a rule, but he didn’t have much softness in him either.”
Lauren had a sudden image of Cal as a motherless child, all solemn gray eyes and aching grief. With effort, she clamped down on the emotions the image evoked. Cal wouldn’t thank her for her pity.
“By the time I was fifteen, we were butting heads pretty regular. I wanted to ride broncs and drive fast cars, and I didn’t much care for the day-to-day grind of ranching.”
“In other words, you were a normal teen.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. Instead he sipped the wine, but it might have been water for all his expression gave away. “The day I turned sixteen, I split.”
“Because you were bored? Fed up with the routine?”
“No, because I had the mother of all fights with my dad. We’d had lots of fights before, about the rodeo stuff and about me not wanting to drag my ass out of bed early enough for him, but this was different. I came home from school that night to find out he’d put my horse down.”
“Oh, God, Cal. I’m so sorry.” Lauren’s brain raced with the possibilities. A broken leg? Or maybe arthritis or neurological disease? There were plenty of reasons why a horse might find itself down and not be able to get up by itself, a potentially fatal situation. Or maybe it had been a quality of life issue. At a certain point, recurring bouts of pneumonia, colic, or laminitis could make euthanasia a kindness. Even dental or digestive issues could leave a horse starving and dehydrated. “What happened to it?”
“Not a damned thing.”
Lauren gasped. “He put a healthy horse down? Why?”
“He said she was too dangerous to keep around.”
Lauren realized she was gripping her wineglass too hard and forced her hand to relax. “And was she?”
“She was a rescue animal,” he continued, “so, yeah, she was a little unpredictable. She’d been neglected—badly—and I brought her home. The bastard I took her from wasn’t too excited about that idea, but he was less excited about the prospect of explaining the mare’s condition to the police if he didn’t surrender her. In the end, he let me trailer her and take her home.”
“But your father wasn’t keen on the idea?”
Cal didn’t look up from his glass of wine. “I kept telling him I could fix her, but he wouldn’t listen. I knew she could be rehabbed, though. She just needed time and patience and a chance to learn to trust someone.”
Oh ma
n, what a situation. Seriously damaged horses could be extremely dangerous, and their rehabilitation could take a very, very long time. She knew from experience it took a lot more than love to fix an abused or neglected animal, especially a horse. They were big enough to kill if they felt threatened.
“We’d had a few knockdown, drag-’em-out arguments about it over the months that we had her, but I never dreamed he’d up and kill her.”
Lauren heard it in his voice, clear as anything. A lonely, motherless boy raised by a hard-nosed rancher, Cal had probably identified with that neglected mare more than his father could have known. “Oh, Cal.”
“Anyway, I came home after school one day to find he’d put her down. Said she was too dangerous to keep around.”
Lauren flinched.
“The long and the short of it is we fought. I was out of my mind with fury. Hard words were exchanged—I don’t even remember what all I said, except, Fuck you. I’m outta here and I’m never coming back. I remember that pretty clearly. I also remember his parting words pretty well. He said that I was no good, that I never would be any good, because I couldn’t settle to anything. Said I’d wind up busted up in the rodeo or working for wrangler’s wages.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, he meant it all right.”
“Where is he now?”
“Still running the Taggart ranch, far as I know.” He cricked his neck one way, then the other. “I expect the lawyers would have tracked me down if anything had happened to him.”
Oh man, they really were estranged if Cal was counting on some estate lawyer to let him know when his father died. Something told her not to pursue that thread, though. “I see.” She took a sip of her wine. “So, let me guess—you set out to prove your father wrong by starting this ranch?”
“No.” He gave her a crooked grin. “I set out to prove him right. Made a name for myself on the bullriding circuit.”
Lauren caught her breath. “Bulls? Those big Brahmans like I see on TV sometimes?”
His grin widened at that. “Brahmans make good bucking bulls all right, but they got all kinds. They just have to be big enough, athletic enough, and rank enough.”