Kentucky Flame

by Jan Scarbrough

“Grow up! I’ve dealt with a man much more adept in harassing women than you can ever dream of being.”

  She shoved past him, grabbed the cooler and threw it over the back of the horse. Jake didn’t have a retort. What had happened between Mel and her ex-husband?

  Leaving Royalty to stand in the cross-ties while she cooled, Mel stomped out of the stall, picked up the saddle and marched down the aisle. Jake followed, getting a good view of her full, swinging hips.

  He had to admit Mel was right. He was acting like a lout. He didn’t like himself much at that moment.

  In the tack room, she struggled to lift his saddle onto the highest rack. Coming up from behind, he took it from her out-stretched hands and put it easily on the top bar.

  “I don’t need your help.” She swung away from him in a huff.

  “But I need yours,” he said, following her again into the aisle. “Stop, Mel. Wait a minute.” He grabbed her arm and spun her around.

  “Take your hands off me.” She fought him, squirming in his grasp.

  “Cut it out, Mel. I’ll let you go, if you hear me out.” His fingers nipped her soft flesh.

  She stopped and glared at him, descending into a hostile silence.

  “You’ll only have to put up with me for two months.”

  “Right. Then what?” Her eyes were hard and bitter.

  “Then what? I don’t know. It depends what happens at Louisville. If one of us wins, this farm will continue to need two trainers. If neither of us wins...” Jake shrugged his shoulders as he let the implication hang in the air. “There are no guarantees in this business.”

  “You’re just finding that out?”

  He let her jab go. “What about it, huh?”

  Her gaze roved across his face. “No, I will not do it.”

  “Why did you come home, Mel? Why did you come back to Kentucky?” His voice rose with exasperation.

  “I came home to take care of Pop after his heart attack.” She almost added something else but stopped herself.

  “If you care about your father’s physical condition, why don’t you care about his dream?”

  “What do you mean?” Mel stiffened defensively and scowled at him.

  “The World’s Grand Championship. Your father knows he may not be around next year. He wants to win it now. One more time. For Vanessa and the farm, and for an old man’s dream.”

  “Why do you care so much?”

  He shrugged again. “This place is in my blood. My years in California taught me that. And the Nobles were always good to me.” When she frowned, Jake went on, “I think I’ve always loved Pop.” And you too, he thought as he watched emotions play havoc with her face.

  Mel turned from him, standing with her back away from him in the hot and dusky aisle, the horse behind her moving and snorting in his stall. Jake watched her bowed head. It was as if the weight of the world pressed on her shoulders.

  “C’mon, Mel, make an old man’s dream come true.”

  “That’s just it, dreams don’t come true.” She sounded as if she had voiced some inner conviction.

  “Sure they do, Mel. If you make them come true.”

  Jake thought she would deny him again. She was so cynical. He didn’t know what else to say to convince her. He didn’t like the frown he had seen earlier on her face or the sorrow in her eyes. His heart lurched in response to her pain.

  Turning back to face him, a resigned look in her eyes, Mel surprised him when she said, “I’ll go with you to the show in Lexington. I’ll give you my time through the show in Louisville. I’ll try to win the World’s Grand Championship on Royalty. After that, who knows?”

  Jake didn’t know what made her change her mind, but he wanted to hug her. Instead he grinned like a little boy caught with his hand in a cookie jar. “No, we’ll win the World’s Grand Championship. You won’t regret this, Mel, not at all!”

  * * * *

  Mel hoped she wouldn’t regret her decision. Tomorrow, when they left for the show in Lexington, she and Jake would be thrown together for a long, hard week.

  Sitting at the kitchen table after dinner, Pop’s green eyes hardened. “I told you not to marry that scoundrel, darlin’.”

  Mel tensed, not wanting to talk about it anymore. She had married Lenny Stephenson in good faith. A businessman with a passion for Saddlebred horses, he was ten years older. He’d seemed placid and safe, a shelter from the storm that had been her life after Cory’s birth and subsequent adoption.

  Mel changed the subject, “It’s a good thing I was able to come home, Pop. You need someone to look after you.”

  As soon as she said those words, Mel regretted them. A look of hurt shadowed Pop’s eyes as he turned his gaze sadly away from her.

  “Humph. Don’t need no help. Been takin’ care of myself for most of my seventy-five years, and don’t need to go an’ change that now.”

  Pop’s unsteady movements, as he shoved himself away from the kitchen table and stood up, belied his assurances. He was once a tall man, but the recent heart attack had stooped his shoulders and slowed his movements.

  Mel flinched inwardly while her father shuffled to the counter and pushed the button to open the door of the microwave. The resultant metallic ding had jarred the too quiet kitchen. Swallowing hard, she remembered other days—happy, childhood days—when Pop and her mother had laughed together during the nightly ritual of coffee and toast. Back then, the piercing whistle of the steaming tea kettle had announced the boiling of water. Now Pop used a box-like microwave and a plastic pitcher to heat water. Somehow it wasn’t the same.

  She chewed her lower lip as Pop poured hot water into two ceramic mugs. He stirred in black instant coffee granules and brought the mugs, spoons and all, back to the table.

  “Still fill yours with milk and sugar?”

  “Yes.” She shook her head to remove a curl of hair from her eyes.

  “Sissy way to drink coffee.” Muttering, Pop shuffled to the refrigerator and retrieved the plastic jug of milk.

  Stirring sugar into her coffee, Mel watched his slow and deliberate movements. He poured milk into her mug, returned the jug to the counter, and then set a plateful of crusty, half-burnt toast on the table. The jam was store bought now, not mother’s familiar homemade strawberry preserves. The butter was corn oil margarine and came in a tub. But the hot toasted bread smelled the same—warm and comforting. Some things hadn’t changed.

  Mel saw the sad look in Pop’s eyes, and knew he was thinking of her mother too. Sarah O’Shea had died thirteen years ago of a heart attack that hot August after Pop had won the World’s Grand Championship for the last time. Life had been different for Mel after that, like a raw wound, always open and festering. Then Jake Hendricks had come to Royalty Farm and taken her mind off her grief.

  After they ate, Pop stood up to clear the table, drawing Mel’s focus away from her regrets. “Well, at least the boy won’t let this place be turned into a subdivision.”

  “Who are you talking about, Pop?”

  “Jake Hendricks, the one you’re so mad at me about,” Pop grunted.

  Her father called everybody “boy,” but for all his boyish qualities it was hard thinking of Jake like that—not after seeing the strong, assured man he’d become. Not after he’d kissed her.

  “Oh, surely that isn’t an option.” Mel kept up her end of the conversation.

  With his back to her as he washed up the dishes, her father shrugged his stooped shoulders.

  “Vanessa wouldn’t destroy her father’s dream,” Mel noted, hoping to convince herself.

  Vanessa Noble had been Mel’s first playmate. They’d grown up together on the farm. The owner’s daughter and the daughter of the horse trainer had learned to ride on the same old spotted pony.

  “Vanessa wouldn’t want to, but those real estate developers have been pestering the hell out of her lately.” Pop shook his head.

  “Well, we won’t let that happen, will we?” Mel offered a grin and pushing ba
ck from the table, stood up. “Night, Pop.”

  “Night, darlin’. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

  Suppressing a sigh, Mel climbed the narrow wooden steps to her attic bedroom. Pop was allowed the use of a small two bedroom house on the farm property. Mel had grown up there. It was home.

  Pausing at the threshold of her room, she was overwhelmed by memories. She missed her mother. Her mother would have understood her ambivalence about Jake. She would have understood why she’d given up Cory. Maybe if her mother had lived, she wouldn’t have made as many mistakes—or gotten pregnant in the first place because she wouldn’t have been searching so hard for love.

  Mel flicked the light switch revealing her tiny room. A jumble of stuffed animals waited for her on the patchwork quilt covering her Jenny Lind bed. A battered chest of drawers stood sentry in one corner next to a plain, straight-back chair. The braided, multicolored throw rug added a meager touch of warmth to the worn wooden floor.

  What delighted Mel most were her ribbons. They hung on sagging strings tacked to the yellowed white walls—faded blues, reds, whites, yellows, pinks, greens, even purples. They were all there, crowded together, from her first blue ones as a four-year-old in the lead line classes to her ribbon won on a borrowed horse in the World’s Championship Five-Gaited Pony Stake.

  Slowly pivoting, she gazed at her little-girl room, feeling a bit unnerved because it was the same as when she left. She wasn’t the same little girl. She’d grown up. She’d had to.

  Immense sorrow swelled in Mel’s heart. She sat down on the bed and stared at the wall covered with ribbons. Why did she feel like a child hiding her head in her mother’s skirts?

  For twenty-eight years, Pop had told her scrapes and falls would make her tough. She had experienced plenty of them. Trouble was, she didn’t feel very tough. Not now. Not since she’d finally signed the divorce papers and headed home. Pop needed her after his heart attack, sure, but she had other reasons for returning home. Reasons that had everything to do with her own past mistakes. She wondered if she could ever make amends. To Pop, to Cory...and to herself.

  Mel roused herself from her reflections and went to the bedroom window, placing her clenched fists on the wooden sill. Those wisps of memory were cunning. For years, she’d promised herself not to think about Jake, to relegate the unhappy memory of their separation to her past—to forget.

  She shuddered mentally as she thought of their argument before he left Kentucky. He wouldn’t marry her. He didn’t want her, so she hadn’t told him the truth.

  It had been selfish and cowardly of her, but in the end, she’d been glad to leave Royalty Farm before she began showing. Pop believed she was in college in Missouri, and she had been going to classes before Cory was born.

  Even now an ache tightened around her heart when she remembered how kind the Nobles had been to her and how easy they’d made it for her to hide her pregnancy from her father. Cory’s birth had not taken much time. It had been over and done with, so quickly. So simple. When the Nobles brought a new adopted daughter home, Mel had continued her schooling, forcing herself not to look back—not to regret the choices she’d made.

  In the distant darkness, she saw the black shell of the training barn. For as long as she remembered, the O’Shea family had lived near the big barn at Royalty Farm. It had always been there—familiar and imposing—her touch with childhood. The present destruction filled Mel’s soul with a cold ache. The barn symbolized her life—ashes, burnt wood, rubble and failure.

  But the barn and Royalty Farm could be rebuilt. Just like her life.

  “Jake may be right,” she whispered. Maybe she did have the power to make her dreams come true now that her horrible marriage was behind her. Maybe now she could start again.

  Mel relaxed her grip, opened her palms, and stared at her bandaged hands. They were tiny, but in them there was strength. She could use these hands to control a thousand pound horse.

  Slowly, so as not to hurt herself, she pulled the bandage from her left palm. Jake had held her hands in his larger ones. He had smiled at her, teased her and kissed her. Jake would be with her when they began to rebuild the stable.

  What part would he play as she took her life in her own hands again?

  Chapter Five

  Sunday evening. A massive bronze statue of the famous Saddlebred stallion Supreme Sultan dominated the parking lot in front of the American Saddle Horse Museum near Lexington, but Jake hardly gave it a look. His eyes were only for Mel, who looked totally different in her backless, black sheath dress and high heels. Her calves, muscled from so much time in the saddle, gave her legs a sexy shapeliness. She was small and lithe, everything a man wanted in a woman. His heart lurched in his chest.

  Unfortunately she was still pouting and trying to ignore him. He’d see about that. He put two fingers to his lips and let out a long, wolf whistle.

  Mel halted abruptly and turned back to glare at him, color creeping up her cheeks. “Did you whistle at me?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Who, me?”

  “Don’t play innocent, Mister Hendricks. You whistled at me yesterday.”

  “And I kissed you, too.” Since he had her attention, he wanted to tease her out of her bad humor, just as he had done when they were kids.

  In a huff she tossed her dark auburn hair away from her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that either.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a bratty little boy,” Mel shot back and walked ahead of him toward the museum.

  “Whenever you walk away from me, I get a good view,” Jake said, keeping his voice level.

  “Can’t you keep a civil tongue in your head?” She stopped again and glared at him.

  “Just the facts, ma’am.” Jake shrugged as he kept his gaze focused firmly on her face.

  She clinched her teeth and narrowed her eyes. Her look of pure irritation hit him in the funny bone. He grinned at her, which seemed to only anger her more.

  “Look, I didn’t want to go to this charity thing. You can at least be civil,” Mel snapped.

  “What’s the matter? Nerves?”

  “Well, yes.” She turned away once more.

  He had thought Mel feared nothing. This was a surprise. “Wait a minute.” He caught her arm, her bare flesh warm in his grasp. “You’re not afraid of a silly cocktail party, are you?”

  “My customers were horse-crazy girls and their mothers. I never had to attend such fancy functions.”

  “You have nothing to worry about.” He tried to encourage her. “You look lovely. Just grab a drink and stick near me. I’ll protect you.”

  “You have a wonderful way with words,” Mel said and whipped around again.

  Jake watched her walk away, regret settling in his gut. He’d meant to make her feel better, not rouse her anger. The way he was going he was no better than Pop, always putting his foot in his mouth. He supposed she didn’t want his protection. Well, he’d change her opinion. He hurried to catch up.

  Mel’s heel caught on the curb, and as she tripped ungracefully forward, she felt the steadying hand of her tormentor on her elbow.

  “Thanks.” Her heart pounded because of her scare. Jake’s work-calloused thumb stroked her skin.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Mel slowed her pace, allowing him to walk by her side, his hand on her arm. She remembered tripping the day of the fire. She remembered the sparks and the low, acrid smoke. Jake had supported her then as he did now.

  “I’m not an invalid. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can,” he said. “But should you?” His whispered words were hot on her bare shoulders.

  Mel stiffened in response to him. Jake was too close. His attention too intimate. After all, they were co-workers, dedicated to saving Royalty Farm. This party was a professional function, something she had to endure. So why did she feel anything but professional? Why did her heart stay in her throat, its cadence pulsing in her neck?

/>   Mel had no answer. She found solace in the anger she wrapped around herself like a shielding cloak. They reached the door, and a group of party-goers swept them up, separating Jake’s grip on her arm. Mel let it happen, glad for the respite. With Jake so near, she felt flustered. First, she practically begged for his help, admitting crowds frightened her, and then she asserted her ability to take care of herself. He must think her crazy.

  Picking up a long-stemmed glass of red wine from a white-coated waiter, Mel escaped into the museum itself and wandered anonymously among the exhibits, her thoughts pounding in her head like a trotting horse. Jake believed she was working for Vanessa solely out of loyalty to Pop, to make her father’s dream come true. But she had a more elemental reason for trying to restore the fortunes of Royalty Farm. Cory. Her daughter. Royalty Farm was part of Corrine Noble’s heritage.

  She was sorry she’d made such a mess of her life. Had that hard-headed trainer thought more about her and not his stupid career, they might have been a family now. The three of them. Nonetheless, Cory was happy and healthy, and that’s what mattered. Unaware of her birth parents, she had grown up the pampered child of Mary and Bert Noble. She had been given the monetary advantages Mel had lacked as a child, and so far Cory had turned out just fine. Mel was proud of her little daughter and the girl’s love of horses, for Cory was as horse crazy as Mel had been at that age and rode just as well.

  She spied Jake at the other end of the room surrounded by other trainers. He looked so handsome in a tuxedo. Her skin prickled as she remembered how his fingertips felt on her bare arm. When his gaze caught hers through the crowd, she held it until another trainer drew his attention away. Frowning, she turned to stare at a nineteenth century painting of a chestnut mare. The colors blurred before her eyes as she felt her face grow hot with an ever-familiar sense of guilt. Sometimes she regretted not telling Jake about his daughter. Touching the glass to her cheek, she hoped she survived this party without becoming sick.

  “You look quite becoming, Melody, darling,” a familiar voice said behind her.