Winning Odds Trilogy

by MaryAnn Myers

  Cajun couldn’t have been more cooperative. In a little less than half an hour, Dawn was leading him back to their barn. She glanced up and down the road for Randy’s truck, the third time she’d looked for it that day, and this time spotted it, then him. He was three barns away, talking to some woman. They were laughing.

  Tom was watching for her, leaning against the outside of the barn, arms crossed and chewing on a toothpick. “I had to practically kick the old man out of here.”

  Dawn chuckled.

  Tom motioned for her to hold up, and ran his hands down Cajun’s legs. He too had a date. But unlike Ben, Tom was looking forward to his, and in a bit of a hurry. “Do him up in alcohol, but smear some Furacin on these cuts first.” He stepped aside. “You gonna be all right by yourself?”

  Dawn rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’ll be fine.”

  Tom hesitated. “Everything else’s done. I mixed his bran mash.”

  Dawn nodded, glancing back over her shoulder as she led Cajun down the shedrow. “Have fun.”

  “Always,” Tom said, and went right into his own rendition of, “They’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight,” loud as could be and woefully out of tune.

  Dawn gave Cajun a few turns around the shedrow, then put him in his stall and watched him. “What are you looking for?” she’d asked Ben the first time she saw him do this.

  “Lots of things,” he told her. For one, “whether or not they’re hungry.” Ben liked to see a horse go into its stall and first thing, grab a mouthful of hay. “Then you watch to see if a horse rolls. A lot of them will lay down in the spit barn and roll, itching after a bath, but a good many will roll again when they get to their own stalls. Habit. You have to watch carefully.” He explained how a horse in distress will roll as well as a horse feeling good. “But there’s a difference. You’ll get so you can tell.” You also looked for the obvious, whether or not they were bleeding anywhere. Whether or not they were favoring a leg. “Sometimes they won’t show it till they get down and go to get back up.”

  Cajun rolled, then got up, shook, turned around, and rolled again. He broke out in a sweat then. Most all of them will break out a little. It’s when they start sweating too much you have to be concerned, Ben had said. It might be they just haven’t wound down yet. But it might also be because they’re hurting or not properly cooled out. “Remember, every horse is different.”

  Cajun had only broken out a little. Dawn waited until he started eating his hay, then walked down and gathered his leg wraps, waited a little while longer before giving him his bran mash, and was humming to herself as she entered his stall and began brushing him off.

  Randy came around the corner of the barn a few minutes later, looked into the tack room, then glanced down the shedrow, and followed the sound of her voice.

  Dawn had just gotten down on her knees to do Cajun up and was reaching outside the stall for his wraps. Randy handed them to her.

  She looked at him and smiled as he bent under the webbing and sat down in the straw just inside the doorway.

  “He run good, huh?”

  She nodded. “Did you see the race?”

  “I caught the last half. He finished strong.” He felt Cajun’s knees and ankles. “Looks like he came back okay.” He pointed to two cuts on the inside of Cajun’s right leg. “Put something on those before you do him up.”

  Dawn smiled, shaking her head, and motioned to the jar of Furacin in the bucket next to him. He opened it, smeared some on the cuts, wiped his finger on the straw, then closed the jar and put it back. “So where did you get the Jaguar?”

  Dawn splashed some alcohol on Cajun’s left leg, and glanced at him. “It was a gift from my father.”

  Randy gazed into her eyes. “It’s really beautiful. I stopped by it this morning in the daylight to look at it.” He paused. “Why didn’t you tell me it was yours?”

  Dawn could’ve answered, “Because the guard beat me to it,” but chose to remain silent.

  Randy glanced down the shedrow and back. “I owe you for yesterday.”

  Again Dawn remained silent.

  “So, if I buy you dinner, will you take me for a ride in it?”

  Dawn smiled. “Sure...”

  Randy watched as she rubbed Cajun’s legs. Down and over. Then down again, gently yet brisk. Just the right amount of pressure...again and again. Such beautiful hands too. Such long, slender fingers. He leaned his head back against the wall, absorbed in the rhythm.

  While Dawn locked up, Randy waited in the truck. She checked her watch as she climbed in. “I have to make a phone call before we leave,” she said, and didn’t notice his sudden mood swing as they rode to the pay phone outside the guard shack.

  Dawn dialed, then turned her back so Randy couldn’t hear. “It’s me.”

  “Where are you?” Linda asked.

  “At the track. Randy asked me to dinner. We’re going now. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Aunt Maeve’s here.”

  “What?!” Dawn whispered. “When did she get there?”

  “She flew in just a few hours ago. She wants to take us to Antonio’s. We’re waiting for you.”

  Dawn shifted her weight and glanced at Randy, then shook her head and sighed. “How long is she planning on staying?”

  “Just tonight. She’s leaving for Texas in the morning for some benefit. It’s in her behalf.”

  What timing. “All right.” Dawn stared down at the ground, resigned to the fact. “I’ll be home in half an hour.”

  Her face was flushed as she hung up and walked around to Randy’s side of the truck. He rolled his window down the rest of the way, looking like he already knew what she was about to say.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to do this some other time.”

  “Problem?”

  “No...just family. I’m really sorry.” She hesitated, then turned, and without offering any further explanation, walked to her car.

  Randy watched her, fuming, and thought about calling after her and demanding to know who she’d just phoned. It seemed the most important thing in the world at the moment, knowing. Whatever the answer. But instead, he swore under his breath, smacked the steering wheel, and drove out the stable gate. The hell with her. He never had to chase after a woman before. Why bother now?

  Ben refused to discuss any details of his dinner date, and halfway through the morning, threatened Tom’s life if he even so much as thought about bringing it up again. “Enough, all right?!”

  “Oh, who gives a shit,” Tom said. “I don’t want to know anyway.” He smiled, deciding to drop it for a while, and reached for the sale catalog Ben had in his hand. “Find one yet?”

  Ben scowled at him. “Hip #12.”

  Tom flipped through the pages, nodded, and laid the catalog down and picked up Ben’s condition book.

  “Give me that!” Ben said, snatching it back. Dawn came into the tack room. One look at Tom and that innocent, guilty-as-sin grin of his, and she knew they were still at it. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down with the sale catalog.

  The Vandervoort Estate was having an auction to liquidate their entire breeding and racing stock. Ben was in the market for another broodmare, so he and Tom were planning on going.

  Dawn skimmed through the pages halfheartedly, still somewhat melancholy because of the missed dinner date with Randy, and languished over the horse on page twenty-two. “When you guys go, I’d like you to bring back this filly for me.”

  Ben and Tom glanced at her, then turned back to the condition book.

  “She’s a three-year old and her name is All Together.”

  Ben and Tom both looked at her with similar expressions. “Sure thing,” Tom said.

  Dawn walked over and spread the catalog in front of them. “Isn’t she pretty?”

  Ben nodded, briefly studying the page. “Yes. Pretty and out of our league.”

  “Why?”

  “The breeding. She’ll no doubt be the highest bid hors
e in the sale.” He handed the catalog back to her. “Out of our league.”

  “Hmph. I have good taste then.”

  Tom chewed and chewed on a toothpick. “We’re talking major big bucks here, Dawn.”

  Dawn sighed as she stared down at the picture. The filly was gray. “I love gray horses.”

  Ben rolled his eyes. She was thinking of Gibyag. She’d pouted for a week after he’d sold him. “Color has nothing to do...” What was it with women? He shook his head and sat back. “Oh forget it.”

  Dawn and Tom looked at him.

  “Did you know,” he said, “that silly woman puts Ketchup on her steak.”

  Tom laughed. “Hot damn, old man! I knew you’d tell us something sooner or later.”

  Ben took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “And talk! That woman never shuts up. I was driving out the driveway and she was still talking.”

  Dawn chuckled.

  “What else?” Tom said, handing Ben’s glasses to Dawn when she motioned for them. “What else did you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  Dawn cleaned Ben’s glasses with the bottom of her shirt and handed them back to Tom.

  “I ate. I let her talk my ear off. Then I left. That’s it.” Ben reached for his glasses, looked through them, and put them back on. “Nothing more.”

  Dawn smiled at him, then noticed something; a slight quiver in his chin. He got choked up so easily lately. She shook her head at Tom to alert him, and changed the subject. “Well, I still want this filly, so...”

  “You’re crazy,” Tom told her. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Listening...? Yes.” What had started out as a whim and now a diversion, on second thought, began to appeal more and more to her. “But there’s no minimum bid, so I don’t see why...”

  “There’s no minimum bid because it’s understood.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  When Ben got tired of hearing the two of them, he tried a different tactic. “Why don’t you ride down with us.” He figured once the bidding started and she saw how much the filly was going for, he wouldn’t have to say another word. “Coshocton isn’t that far from here. We can get down there and back before feeding time, no problem.”

  “All right,” Dawn said. “Maybe I will.” She knew from Ben’s tone, he was being more patronizing than anything else. Humoring her in a sense. But that didn’t matter. She’d just made a major decision. “Yes, I think I will.”

  They started training especially early the day of the sale, finished with time to spare, and Tom and Ben went to the men’s room to wash up. Tom had been razzing Dawn all morning about the filly she was going to buy, but Ben had been exceptionally quiet. He’d had to scratch Beau from a race because of a poor work the day before and his good mood, albeit brief, had gone steadily downhill. Beau wasn’t right and they all knew it, only no one wanted to admit it. Especially Ben. First he blamed it on his just not being fit. Then he blamed the lousy track conditions. And now it was the blacksmith’s turn.

  Dawn had stopped at the deli on the way home yesterday to pick up sandwiches and a twelve pack of Coke, which she put in the cooler in Tom’s truck. And she had her checkbook tucked safely in her purse. She was ready. She’d been ready. So ready in fact she was nervous and raking the shedrow for the second time just for something to do, when Randy came walking around the corner of the barn.

  He was annoyed with himself for being there. “So, how you been?”

  “Fine.”

  He glanced down the shedrow. “How’s the family?”

  “Fine...”

  “What? No crisis?”

  Dawn shook her head. “There was no crisis. My aunt was in town for the night.”

  Randy stared. How a person could look you square in the eye, lie, and look like they weren’t, amazed him. Infuriated him. “What are you doing today?”

  Dawn couldn’t believe his sarcastic attitude, and responded with a little of her own. “If it’s help you need, you haven’t paid me for the last time yet.”

  Randy shook his head and told himself he should walk away, but hesitated. “I thought we might do something. I doubled up the last couple of days so I could have the afternoon off.”

  Oh really? Dawn turned. Even that remark could have been taken sarcastically, not to mention presumptuous, had he not looked so sincere. “Thanks, but I’m going to...”

  He threw his hand up. “Wait! Don’t tell me. You have to make a phone call first.” This time he was walking away for sure. He started down the shedrow. That’s when Tom and Ben drove up next to the barn.

  “Your chariot awaits, little lady,” Tom said, getting out, extending his arm and bowing at the waist.

  Ben smiled at Randy. “Did she tell you where we’re going?”

  Randy shook his head, wishing he could care less. It had taken him three days to get over her last refusal. He hadn’t expected another one. “No, we didn’t get that far.”

  Ben leaned across the seat. “We’re going to the estate sale in Coshocton.”

  Randy nodded, gazing back at Dawn in spite of himself. “Quite a few people are going down. I hear they’ve got some nice broodmares.”

  Dawn took a tentative step toward him. “Did you say you had the afternoon off?”

  “Yes...why?”

  “Why don’t you come with us?”

  Randy glanced at Tom’s truck.

  “We can follow them in my car,” Dawn said, trying not to sound too anxious.

  Randy looked at her. “Can I drive it?”

  Dawn smiled. “No.”

  Randy paused, as if he had to think about it now. “All right. I’ll park my truck up by the guard shack.”

  Ben tossed him the sale catalog. “We’re going to bid on Hip #12.” He winked at Dawn. “And the little lady here wants Hip #27. They’re both marked.”

  Chapter Nine

  Tom cruised along on the freeway at just above sixty-five miles per hour, with Dawn right behind him. “You know, Ben,” he said, glancing in his rear-view mirror. “I think Dawn has the hots for Randy.”

  Ben stared at the road.

  “You hear me, old man. I’m talking to you. I said I think Dawn has the hots for Randy.”

  “So...”

  “So, what do you think of him?”

  Ben shrugged. “He’s all right I guess. Jake thought an awful lot of him as a vet.”

  Tom frowned, glancing at him. “Dawn’s not a goddamned horse, you know.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Nothing. I like him, and was just wondering what you thought of him.”

  Ben sighed, looking out his window at the trees whizzing by. “Like I said, he’s all right.”

  Tom nodded and, thinking, switched his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Does she ever talk about a boyfriend?”

  “No, why?”

  “Why...?” Tom glanced at her in his rear-view mirror again. “Because that back there at the barn looked like a little bit more to me than, ‘Hey, you wanna ride along?’ That’s why, if you know what I mean.”

  Ben drew a deep breath and exhaled heavily, not wanting him to get started on this. “Why don’t you just stay out of it.”

  “What? I ain’t in it. I’m just talking.” Tom looked at him, shaking his head, and they rode on for a few minutes in silence. “But come to think of it, I do remember her saying something a while back about some guy. They’d been to a play or something. Remember...?”

  Ben nodded, feeling a little like a father whose daughter had just come of dating age. He’d never really had to think of Dawn as a woman before. “And yes, I like Randy.”

  Tom grinned. “See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Ben just looked at him.

  “Well then, I guess it’s good we both like him, because it’s obvious as hell Dawn does too.”

  Ben nodded. He didn’t need Tom to tell him this; he’d had a feeling himself. But if he had a say, he’d rather
she not date anyone at the track, because he hated the gossip. And no matter what, there was always plenty of it. He sighed, knowing he really didn’t want to ask, but asked anyway, “What do you know about this vet?”

  Tom cocked an eyebrow. “Whoa...the old man wants to talk now.”

  Ben shook his head and stared out his window.

  Tom glanced at him. “Okay,” he said. “I can see you’re serious. What do you want to know?”

  Ben hesitated. “Does he sleep around?”

  “Some.”

  Ben looked at him. “What do you mean, some? How much is that?”

  Tom tipped his head. “All right...a lot.”

  “A lot?”

  “Not as much as me.”

  Ben rolled his eyes. He should’ve known better than to ask.

  “He was fucking Bud’s daughter Ginney for a while. Still is, I think.”

  “What? That slut?”

  Tom laughed. “Hey, that slut is one hell of a fuck. And she ain’t that bad looking either.”

  Ben sighed disgustedly.

  “And I think he’s sleeping with Kathy Randall too. You know, that woman stinks. I mean, really stinks. Right out of the shower.” He made a face. “And then there’s that new groom of Turner’s...”

  Ben raised his hands. “Let’s make this simple. Is there any woman on the track you and this vet haven’t slept with?”

  Tom nodded. “Yeah...one. Dawn.”

  Ben smacked the dashboard. “Goddamn you, Tom! Just shut up and drive! All right?”

  They rode in silence for at least ten miles, until finally Tom had to say something. “Hey, Ben, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. You know me.”

  Ben looked at him.

  “I never think of Dawn that way, honest.”

  Ben leaned his head back and sighed. “I know.”

  Again they rode in silence. It was Ben who spoke next. “It’s just that I’d hate to see her get hurt.”

  “Me too.” Tom nodded, flicking his toothpick out the window and reaching into his pocket for another. “But you can’t live her life for her. She has to make her own decisions. Right or wrong.”