Carolyn McSparren - Mr. Miracle

Vic shook her head. “No way. Tonight we go by truck. My truck. I drive. And then you can take it to pick up the pizza. They refuse to deliver this far out in the country.”

“Then I’ll put the bike in the stable, shall I? And lock the door?”

“Be my guest, but we don’t have many thieves. Open the tailgate on the truck so the dogs can hop up for the ride home. Oh, and you may have to pick Max’s rear end up. Basset hounds are not the world’s best leapers.”

JAMEY FOLLOWED Vic’s directions to the Italian restaurant. While he waited for the pizza to come out of the oven, he found a pay telephone by the rest rooms and called his farm in Scotland collect. After half a dozen rings and his uncle Hamish’s disgruntled agreement to accept the charges, Hamish sputtered, “Good God, lad, do you have any idea what time it is here?”

“Sorry, Uncle Hamish. This is the first chance I’ve had for a private chat. The horse is everything I hoped—at least he seems to be so far.”

“You’ve found him, then?” Hamish suddenly sounded fully awake.

“I think so.” Jamey gave him the story. “But don’t call me at ValleyCrest unless it’s an emergency. How are you and Uncle Vlado doing?”

“We’re fine. Everything’s all proper and accounted for. Nothing’s missing this time.”

“Nothing would’ve been missing last time if the pair of you had been in charge rather than my brother and my darling wife,” Jamey said.

“Aye, but just so you know. Have you ridden the beast?”

“Not yet Uncle Hamish, do you remember my last year in school when you and Jock took me with you to Hickstead for the horse trials? I must have been sixteen or so.”

“I remember Hickstead. I don’t remember any year in particular.”

“The Americans came in second. There was a woman rider named Victoria Jamerson riding for them. On a big gray gelding.”

“Humph.” Hamish was silent for a moment. “Beautiful girl with the devil’s own nerve, the sweetest softest hands I’ve ever seen, and a seat...” He sighed. “I remember wishing I could have that seat on my lap.” He chortled, and Jamey smiled at the telephone. “Married to a big fat brute of a trainer who yelled a lot. Why?”

Jamey explained.

“Terrible!” Hamish said. “A woman like that belongs on a horse.”

“If I have my way about it, Uncle Hamish, that’s where she’s going to be—sitting on top of Roman and showing him to me.”

“You’re mad! Steal the brute if you must and bring him home. Don’t get yourself mixed up with these gaja.”

Jamey let out such a burst of laughter that a waitress walking by him jumped and stared at him in alarm. “You sound like Uncle Vlado! Don’t forget, Uncle Hamish, you’re Jock’s brother, not Vlado’s. You’re a gaja yourself.”

“Maybe, but I’m too smart to mix myself up in the lives of people who don’t matter to me or to the McLachlans, Jamey.”

“I’m not mixing myself up. I’m doing this because it suits my purposes. I’ll help her out for a couple of weeks, see him work with another rider up, teach him some manners, find out whether or not I can buy the horse myself and then, if I have to, I sneak him into a trailer at two in the morning and head for Texas.”

“Mm-hm.” Hamish did not sound convinced. “And be the first person they look to as a thief.”

“Trust me, Hamish, I’ll do whatever it takes to get Roman home. We will have Jock’s first Scottish sport horse foal on the ground by the millennium, I promise. If they sue me, I’ll deal with that and any other legal unpleasantness I have to. But I’ll deal from Scotland. I owe Jock that and more. Roman will stand as foundation stallion at McLachlan Yard. I promised Jock before he died. I keep my promises.”

CHAPTER FIVE

WHILE SHE WAITED for Jamey to come back with the pizza, Vic stood under a hot shower and washed her cap of short dark hair. When she’d dried herself, she reached for a violet sweater and a pair of dark gray flannel slacks that she generally only wore when she was going to town. In the mirror she stuck out her tongue at the streak of gray in her hair and wondered whether she should start coloring it.

She had given Jamey the keys to her truck without a moment’s hesitation, but after he drove out to get the pizza, she’d remembered Angie’s comments about con men. Of course, if he did decide to keep driving, she’d have his motorcycle. It—and his stuff upstairs—were probably worth much more than her rattletrap of a truck.

She wanted him to come back with or without the truck. Last night, chatting over that omelette, she’d realized how lonely she’d been and for how long.

Not that she wasn’t surrounded by people. But she felt as though it had been years since she’d talked, really talked, to an attractive man. A man who seemed to care about what she said.

She put a touch of eye shadow on her lids and pulled out her lipstick. She was acting like a young woman on a date. She smiled at her foolishness, doubting that Jamey saw her that way.

By the time the truck rolled in, she had set the kitchen table and poured them each a glass of red wine. The dogs lay on the shabby couch in the living room. The cat lay on top of them.

“Pizza man!” he called from the door. All three animals raced to greet him.

“No pizza for them,” she said. “They throw it up, and besides, I’m starving.”

He set the box on the table, opened it and reached for his wine. “To our first day together. And to many more.”

She felt herself blushing as they touched glasses.

“So, do I suit, lass?”

“Until something better comes along. No, seriously, you’re a godsend and you know it. We need to talk about a decent salary. I was thinking a full groom’s wages plus what I planned to pay Angie Womack to exercise. Plus the free room, of course, if we ever make it habitable.”

He suddenly seemed uncomfortable. “You’re a generous woman.”

“You’re doing the work of at least two people, so you should receive the pay. Heck, I’d pay you just to keep Blockhead from yowling his head off all day.”

“Why do you call him Blockhead? He’s got a lovely head.”

“It’s his temperament. At least it was until you got hold of him. My new nephew-in-law, Mike Whitten, had never been around horses or the horse-show business before he met Liz, and he’s sort of ga-ga. And he adores her. He found out quite by accident that the big annual European Sport Horse Sale was taking place so off he went.”

Jamey sat back, laughed gently and shook his head. “And bought the biggest blackest stallion he could. They must have seen him coming. The horse isn’t branded. I’d say he’s what—three, four years old?”

“That’s the thing. Mike refuses to tell even Liz how much he paid, but I suspect it was a bundle. And the horse has no papers—none.”

Jamey sat upright. No papers? That was a bonus. He wouldn’t have to prove forgery.

“Some German farmer brought him to the show, auctioned him and disappeared the moment he signed the bill of sale,” Vic continued. “Without proof of ancestry, Mike can’t even enter him into the American Stallion Provings so that he can be approved as a breeding stallion after he’s trained.”

“It’s high time other countries began to develop their own sport-horse breeds. The Irish do a fair job, but none of their horses are consistent enough to compete with the Europeans. The French are fairly successful, but a new breed registry requires a prepotent foundation stallion that’ll sire a line of horses as fine as he is—” Jamey stopped speaking abruptly and looked at her.

“Well, go on. I agree with you. How do you propose to do that in one lifetime?”