by Janet Gover
Her tawny brown eyes glinted with a hint of gold as they stood looking at each other, both so very aware of soft water on bare skin. Of a heat that emanated as much from them as from the setting sun. There was invitation in her eyes. In the subtle sway of her body towards him. All he had to do was raise one hand to feel that silky skin. Take one small step toward that slender body. To lower his head and taste those soft lips.
From behind, a sudden sharp noise, rock falling on rock. Instinct and training took over. Dan spun around, pushing Quinn behind him to shield her as his fingers twitched to hold the rifle he no longer carried. His eyes flew to the source of the noise. Looking for movement. For the glint of sun on metal or the shape of a man.
‘It’s just a kangaroo.’
Quinn’s voice steadied him, and he followed her pointing arm to see the creature bounding away through the rocks. Not a threat. Or an enemy. Just a harmless animal. The rock wall once more became just an outback landscape, no longer an ambush. Dan shook himself, trying to avoid looking back at Quinn. He knew what he would see.
The army doctors had called it PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not unexpected, they said, given what he’d survived in Iraq and Afghanistan. Treatable, they said. With time and care and drugs. Nothing to be ashamed of. But that was easy for them to say. He knew what lay behind his nightmares and he was ashamed.
Behind him, he heard Quinn splash playfully in the water, inviting him to turn around and finish what they had just started. But a few moments ago, he’d seen desire in Quinn’s eyes. He didn’t want to look at her again and see that pity had replaced it.
‘We’d better get back to camp,’ he said shortly and began to wade out of the billabong.
Chapter Fourteen
Justin kept one eye on the long driveway as he walked down to the stables. Carrie should be here soon. She’d taken the borrowed truck back to her boss and was due to return with whatever she needed for a few days camping in the gorge, or here with him. He was grateful she had agreed to help. She understood how important this was to him. He still found it hard to believe. Mariah’s son – out there all this time. It was the answer to a prayer.
‘I’ll bring him back, Dad,’ he said under his breath as he swung open the first metal gate. ‘People will soon be talking about Fraser horses like they used to. You just wait and see. I’ll make you proud of me.’
A loud nicker from the direction of the stables was his answer and it made him smile. Now he was going to be able to carry on his father’s work the way it should be done.
A new sound from the direction of the driveway caught his attention. Carrie was here. She parked closer to the stables than the house, and raised an arm in greeting as she got out of the car. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a plain shirt. Dressed for work, not to impress. But despite that, Justin felt his heart give a tiny kick. Whoa, he thought. What’s that all about?
Carrie started walking his way. Justin paused by the gate to give her time to reach him.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Thanks for helping me out like this.’
‘It’s no problem,’ she responded with a small smile.
‘Shall we get right down to it – or would you like some coffee?’ Justin hadn’t planned on going back into the house before starting work, but his subconscious seemed to have its own ideas about playing host to Carrie.
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Well then …’ At once thankful and disappointed, Justin led the way to the stables. ‘I’ve only got two horses in work that we need to ride this evening. And the stallion needs to be lunged. The mares will need feeding and there are four stalls to muck out.’
‘I could do the feeds and muck out while you were riding,’ Carrie said.
‘Why don’t we ride together? Then we can share the mucking out.’
‘No,’ Carrie answered very quickly. ‘You ride. I’ll do the rest. Then we can get back to the camp.’
Justin didn’t understand why she would say no to a late afternoon ride. It was his favourite part of the day and barely counted as work next to the messy job of cleaning the stables.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right then.’ Justin felt curiously deflated. He had been looking forward to riding with Carrie and showing her the land that meant so much to him. ‘But next time it will be my turn to do the dirty work.’
It took just a few minutes to show Carrie the stables, feed room and the horses, before taking his saddle out of the tack room. A few moments later, he was riding away on his big bay gelding. The horse was eager to stretch his legs, and that matched Justin’s mood very well. He was excited about the prospect of capturing the brumby stallion. Not a brumby – a thoroughbred. His thoroughbred, really. Mariah’s son and his father’s legacy. He was eager to get started on the plan he’d hatched with Dan and Quinn and Carrie.
He nudged the horse with his heels and it broke into a swift canter, as eager as its rider.
Carrie watched Justin ride away, admiring the way he sat the powerful young gelding. As if he belonged there. As if the two of them had merged into a single creature. She knew how good that felt. With every fibre of her being she longed to be there, beside him. Riding as she used to. Before … But at the same time, she was weak with relief that he had accepted her offer to muck out the stables while he rode. It delayed for at least one more day the moment that he found out how she was lying.
She turned away from the sight of Justin and his horse cantering with easy grace and freedom across the brown earth.
Her first job was to feed the brood mares. There were five of them in a small paddock, with plenty of shade and safe fences for the two month old foals they had at foot. They needed hay and grain.
Carrie walked into the hayshed, and rolled a bale from the top of the stack onto her shoulder. With the ease of much practice, she balanced the heavy weight with one hand, and with the other she picked up a bucket of grain that Justin had already prepared for the mares. She walked down to the paddock and paused by the gate. This was the moment when she should simply pull open the gate, walk inside and lay out the hay for the mares. But she didn’t. The horses, knowing it was feeding time, were milling around the gate. To get into the paddock, Carrie would have to push her way past them.
She dropped her bale of hay on the ground outside the gate. She flexed her shoulder once the weight was gone, pretending the weight was the reason she had stopped at the gate, and not just carried on with the job she was supposed to do. On the other side of the fence, the mares were becoming even more restless, eager for their food. The youngsters were jumping about, infected by their mothers’ movements as they jostled for their dinner.
There was absolutely nothing to be frightened of. These were not the high-spirited racehorses she had once ridden. These horses were bluebloods, they were brood mares. Well accustomed to human company. As for the foals. For goodness’ sake – they were smaller than she was and the only threat in them was the possibility they would trip over their own gangly legs and fall face first in the dust.
Carrie looked at her hands. They were shaking. All she had to do was open the gate and walk inside the yard. All she had to do was place the hay where the mares could eat. After that, she would empty the bucket of grain into the raised feed trough. It was a job she once would have done without thinking. The work of a minute or two. Not to be given a second thought. But here she was, one hand on the gate, frozen with fear. Afraid of a few gentle brood mares.
She wanted to weep with frustration. But she didn’t. She had already shed far too many tears.
It should have been so easy to go back after the accident.
Her body had healed, but her mind – that was another matter.
Carrie took a deep breath and let the memories wash over her. The excitement of the racetrack. The satin smooth coats of the horses and her red and yellow and blue jockey’s silks – so vibrant and soft. How she loved the excitement of it all. And the endless promi
se that seemed to vibrate around her as the horses entered the starting gates. Her favourite moment was that few seconds as she crouched low over her horse’s neck, waiting for the gates to spring open. That was a moment where anything seemed possible. She always held her breath, feeling the coiled energy in the animal beneath her, waiting for that moment when the gates sprang open and the horses leaped out into a full gallop. Even now, her heart beat faster at the memory.
If only that was the only memory that made her heart contract. She could still see the look on Doctor Adam’s face as he raised a long needle and prepared to plunge it into her body. She could still recall every terrifying moment of that emergency flight from the Birdsville Races to Mount Isa hospital. She had spent more than an hour strapped into a stretcher on the air ambulance. Sitting beside her, Adam Gilmore had held her hand and talked to her every moment of the journey. Reassuring her she was going to be all right. And then, at the hospital – the white coated surgeons …
She heard a strange noise and realised it was the sound of herself, whimpering as the memories struck her with what was almost a physical pain.
She took a slow deep breath and pulled the pocket knife from the leather pouch on her belt. She cut the twine around the bale and began to pull it into slabs. As she did, she hurled each slab over the fence with a swift underarm swing that sent the hay many metres from where she was standing. Startled, the mares shied away from the flying slabs of hay, then, realising what it was, they moved swiftly over to begin eating.
The gate was now clear, as was the metal feed trough just beyond it. Carrie lifted the bucket of feed and taking a firm grip on her fear; she opened the gate and walked through. She quickly emptied the contents of the bucket into the trough. As she did, the mares, turned toward her, eager for the sweet taste of the grain. Carrie quickly moved back through the gate, slamming it shut behind her.
It was ridiculous that her heart was pounding and her breath was catching in her throat. She shook her head. If Justin saw her now, what would he think?
Something thumped her in the middle of her back. She jumped away from the fence and spun around. One of the foals, not interested in its mother’s feed, had come to investigate this strange person leaning on the fence. It thrust its head between the rails, nostrils quivering as it stretched its nose out to sniff her.
A foal, Carrie thought. No more than eight or nine weeks old. She couldn’t be frightened of a foal.
‘Hello, there,’ she said in a soft and gentle voice. ‘You are a handsome young man, aren’t you?’
The foal’s ears twitched as it listened to her voice. It pushed even harder against the fence, stretching its neck to come just an inch closer to Carrie.
She reached out her hand and stroked the foal’s nose. It was so soft. Its lips flicked against her fingers, checking for any source of food. Carrie let out the breath she hadn’t even realised she was holding. With a little more confidence, she stroked the broad space on the youngster’s forehead and pulled a leaf from its forelock.
It felt so good to be doing this. To feel a moment of pleasure instead of the fear.
A sudden movement from the feeding mares caused both Carrie and the foal to jump. The colt pulled his head back through the fence and in response to a nicker from the direction of the feed trough, went trotting back to its mother.
Carrie picked up the empty feed bucket and set off back to the stables feeling almost pleased with herself. She had taken a step in the right direction. Only a small step, but didn’t everyone say the first one was the hardest? Maybe she was ready to take another, slighter bigger one. The stable block was a huge shed, with tack and feed rooms at one end, and stalls for the horses down both sides. Not all the stalls were occupied. But the middle one on the right side of the shed housed Justin’s stallion.
Dropping the bucket outside the feed room, she walked into the big tack room. It only took a moment for her to find what she was looking for. The stallion, Beckett, needed to be exercised on the lunge. There was no riding involved with that. All she had to do was stand in the middle of the round yard, and keep the stallion trotting in circles at the end of the long lunge rein. It was something the stallion did almost every day. He’d probably do it without any guidance from her at all. She could do that. She had to be able to do that. If she couldn’t do that, she might as well just walk away now.
The stallion was waiting, his head over the stable door. Carrie stopped a few paces away.
‘Well, Beckett, here we are,’ she said.
The horse gazed at her. He was a nice animal, Carrie could see. But he wasn’t in the same class as the stallion running with the brumbies. Mariah’s son.
‘I think you’re about to be replaced, boy,’ she said in a calm voice. She stepped forward, ignoring the churning in her gut, and stroked the stallion’s face. He tilted his head, requesting a scratch behind his ear. Carrie obliged.
This was obviously a well-mannered animal. She should have known he would be, with Justin as his owner and trainer. He’d be no problem at all. Before she could talk herself out of it, Carrie slipped the lungeing cavesson onto the horse’s head and attached the long rein. She unlatched the stall door and quickly stepped back. Beckett walked sedately through the door. He’d obviously done this a hundred times before.
This is going to work, Carrie thought. Her heart in her mouth, she moved into position beside the horse’s head and tugged on the rein. The big horse obeyed instantly, calmly stepping forward. Carrie went with him, but not too close. She could hear her own heart thumping as she approached the stable doors. Carrie blinked as they stepped out into the bright sunlight. They turned towards the wooden railed exercise yard, but the stallion suddenly stopped and flung up his head. He rolled his eyes and his nostrils flared as he sensed another horse. He lifted in a half rear and roared – a harsh masculine challenge that caused Carrie to flinch away from him, half raising her arm to cover her face from a danger that was mostly in her own mind.
The stallion’s challenge roused the horses in the nearby paddocks. As they raced around the fences, Beckett’s excitement rose a notch. Thoroughly agitated now, he started prancing on the spot, reefing at the rein in Carrie’s hands.
She knew how to stop him. All she needed to do was tug his head back down. Assert her dominance over him and force him to focus on her commands, not on the other horses. It was so easy. She’d done it a thousand times before with horses far more uncontrolled than Beckett.
‘I can’t do this,’ she sobbed as she fought the urge to just drop the rein and run. With the greatest effort of will, she maintained control of herself long enough to drag the stallion’s head around until he was facing back into the stables. She tugged the rein and he reluctantly followed her, still tossing his head and trying to turn around. Carrie hurried a few steps ahead of him, then reefed on the rein again. The stallion lunged forward. She ducked out of his way and did the same thing again. This time, they reached the open door of his stall and the horse darted inside. Carrie let go of the rein, slamming the stall door quickly.
In a flash Beckett had turned around and was straining back over the gate, screaming his frustration. He lashed out with both hind legs, sending a loud crash echoing through the yard.
Carrie pressed herself back against the opposite wall of the stables and closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding and there were tears on her face. She couldn’t do this. She really couldn’t. She felt weak with disgust at her own cowardice.
What would Justin think of her?
At that thought, she opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was the stallion, still wearing the cavesson, the long rein dangling from it. That wasn’t good. If the rein tangled around his feet, the horse could be injured. She couldn’t allow that to happen. It took all the courage she had to cross the gap and place a hand on the stallion’s neck. Whatever had upset him, he was rapidly calming down now he was in the familiar comfort of his stall. Carrie pulled the polished leather harness off his head and s
tepped back, reeling in the long lunge rein as she did.
There, it was done. She hung the cavesson next to the horse’s stall and wiped her sweating palms against her jeans. The she turned away from the stall and the horse in it. Without pausing or looking back, she walked to the far end of the stables and picked up a rake and shovel. The stall where Justin’s gelding lived needed cleaning out. Shovelling manure was all she was good for now.
At the other end of the shed, Justin remained motionless in the shadows, shocked by what he had just witnessed. He had returned from exercising his gelding far earlier than he normally would. Perhaps it was eagerness to spend more time with Carrie that made him do it. He’d tied the gelding to an outside railing, and was just entering the shed when he saw Carrie send the stallion back into his stall.
Carrie had been terrified. Even in the dimly lit shed, her face had been white as a sheet. He could almost feel the fear emanating from her in waves.
Justin knew the reason. Her terrible fall at the Birdsville Races.
It had never occurred to him that a fall might do such a thing to Carrie. He’d fallen – or been thrown – a hundred times or more since he had scrambled up onto the back of his first pony at the age of about three. Falling was part of working with horses. He accepted it in the same way that he accepted sore muscles at the end of a hard day’s work.
But none of his falls had left him with more than a few scrapes and bruises, and some dents in his pride. Carrie had been seriously injured. If not for Adam and the air ambulance, she might have died. But that was months ago. Surely by now she had recovered. His heart went out to her. How terrible to have lost the thing that you loved the most. No one understood better than he how hard it could be trying to put a life – or your heritage – back together.