Carolyn McSparren - Mr. Miracle

The woman had ridden with the U.S. equestrian team, for pity’s sake. The caliber of talent international competition required didn’t vanish with age.

He’d never find another rider with her sort of experience within a radius of five hundred miles. Even if he did, no way could he insinuate a stranger onto the stallion’s back.

Jamey was nearly convinced that Mr. Miracle was Roman. He couldn’t be entirely sure until he’d seen the horse put through his paces by another rider—a good one. He had to be able to assess the horse’s movements, temperament, and flair.

No doubt Whitten had gotten papers on the horse’s breeding from the farmer in Germany who had sold him. The papers were forged of course, but that might be difficult to prove. Jamey might never be able to trace every step the colt had taken from the moment he’d disappeared from Oban until he’d wound up on a nameless breeding farm in Wurtheim, Germany.

How could Jamey explain to Whitten or even to Vic that he’d spent the past two years searching the world for Roman? Or that he’d arrived in Belgium to check out a friend’s tip about a horse that might be his Roman only a day after Whitten had loaded the horse on an air transport for quarantine in Kentucky? What evidence did he have that would stand up against papers and a bill of sale? How could he tell anybody that Mr. Miracle was in reality Jock McLachlan’s foundation stallion?

Better to keep his mouth shut. At least until he was a hundred percent certain of his facts.

Vic said she couldn’t ride? The hell she couldn’t!

“Nonsense!” he said aloud. “I need her, dammit, and I need her in the saddle.” He slammed through the house, dug through her refrigerator until he found a diet soda and half a pound or so of ham. He took bread from the bread-box, spread it with butter, slid in several pieces of ham and wrapped the whole thing in a paper towel. As he started out the door, he remembered that Americans liked mayonnaise and mustard on their sandwiches, not butter. Well, at seven-thirty in the morning, butter would have to do.

As he walked down the hill, a picture of Vic flying across the pastures on Roman came unbidden into his mind. What he’d give to see that. She’d be beautiful with the wind in her hair, that wide mouth of hers laughing...

Damnation. He needed to keep his mind on business.

Until he’d probed the people at the quarantine station in Kentucky for information, the only thing Jamey knew about ValleyCrest Stables was that the stallion had been sent there, ostensibly for training.

Once Jamey discovered the horse’s final destination, he’d actually had to call three acquaintances in Europe before he found one who knew the owner of ValleyCrest. Vic Jamerson. The name was vaguely familiar, but it took some time to make the connection to Victoria Jamerson. Plenty of riders had come and gone in the intervening years, and her career had been mysteriously short.

He’d had to do some fast toe-tapping to conceal the fact that his only interest was in that single stable—not the others he’d requested letters to.

Thank God Marshall Dunn was the least curious man he’d ever met and not overly swift when it came to anything other than racehorses.

Jamie smiled to himself and shook his head at the memory of the way he had manipulated Marshall.

He was well aware that Marshall considered him “not quite out of the top drawer, don’tcha know?” Good enough to train his problem racehorses, but not good enough to invite to Dunn House for a weekend party.

That should have made Jamey feel a bit better about pulling the wool over the man’s eyes. Marshall was, after all, the stereotypical gaja, the sort of man who, in an earlier century, might have driven Jamey’s family from their lands and watched them starve. Guilt had gnawed Jamey nonetheless.

Then he’d spent an entire evening last week winkling information from one of the lady quarantine attendants in Kentucky. At the time he’d thought he was having another run of dreadful luck. The stallion had been gone only a few days.

“Took the haulers over an hour to load him,” the woman said over her third whiskey sour. “They didn’t dare tranquilize him for fear he’d fall down in the truck and they’d never get him up.” The woman shook her head. “To tell you the truth, we were glad to get rid of him. He’s been a problem child since the day he danced off the airplane from Belgium. It took three of us to handle him, and only then with a chain across his gums.”

“Dangerous?”

The woman had laughed. “Not mean, but definitely dangerous. Anything that big is dangerous.”

Somehow he’d have to convince Victoria Jamerson to ride again. But how long would it take to get her fit enough to deal with a horse like Roman?

She was still in good physical shape. Fantastic shape, actually. Disquieting shape.

He remembered her slim waist when he’d plucked her off that ladder and set her down beside him, then the feel of her breasts pressed against his back on the short motorcycle ride up the hill last evening, the strength of her arms around his waist that held him so tightly he could barely breathe. Nice memory.

Nice woman, dammit, a woman he’d very much enjoy taking to bed. He stared at his reflection in the window of her truck and realized he’d started dreaming of taking her to bed ten minutes after he’d met her.

He could not let himself get involved emotionally. Not with someone he might have to rob. He took a deep breath and dragged his mind back to finding ways of getting Vic Jamerson to ride Roman for him.

Even if her physical shape was superb, her psychological shape was a different matter. Panic attacks like the one on the motorcycle? He’d have to find a way to work her through them. And quickly. Surely he’d be helping her. He refused to consider that he might damage her further.

He found her in the office at the desk. She sat with her head in her hands. She seemed smaller. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her.

She heard him open the door, started guiltily and busied herself with something on the pad in front of her.

“Here,” he said, and handed her the sandwich and soda.

She took both, unwrapped the sandwich and began to eat without taking her eyes off him.

“Now talk.” He sat in the straight chair on the other side of the desk.

“Eat now, talk later,” she said..

“I’m not letting go of this.”

“Fine. In the meantime, go exercise a horse or muck a stall or something.” She turned her back on him and took a swig of soda.

“Fine.” He walked out and shut the door behind him. He checked the white board outside the wash rack for the list of horses to be exercised, went to the farthest stall, pulled out a big gray mare, rubbed her down, tacked her up, swung into the saddle and walked her to the arena. If Vic made him groom and tack his own horses, as well as exercise them, this would take all day.

“So let her muck the stalls,” he said to the mare.

As if in answer, the mare wickered softly. Instantly the stallion’s head went up; he turned and cantered straight at the paddock fence.

“Not now, old son,” Jamey said gently. He began to whistle softly. The stallion slid to a stop a foot from the fence, snorted, pranced around a bit and walked off with his tail in the air. The mare, not cycling sexually this early in February, could not have cared less.

“If you’d gotten to her, she’d have kicked your bloody head in,” Jamey said in passing. The stallion ignored him and fixed his eye on the mare.

She did enough ignoring for them both.

“Women,” Jamey said as he took the mare to a trot. “Make you hanker after them, then kick you in the crotch when you come close. Remember that, old son, and protect yourself in the clinches.”