Chapter Six
It was amazing, really, how two people could live and work in basically the same place, and one could completely avoid the other. It just took setting your mind to it.
Brian set his mind to it for several days. There was plenty of work to keep him occupied and more than enough reason for him to spend time away from the farm and on the tracks. But he found avoidance scraped his pride. It was too close a kin to cowardice.
Added to that, he’d told Keeley he wanted to help her at the school and had done nothing about it.
He wasn’t a man to break his word, no matter what it cost him.
And, he reminded himself as he walked to Keeley’s stables, he was also a man of some self-control.
He had no intention of seducing or taking advantage of innocence.
He’d made up his mind on it.
Then he stepped into the stables and saw her. He wouldn’t have said his mouth watered, but it was a very close thing.
She was wearing one of those fancy rigs again—jodhpurs the color of dark chocolate and a cream sort of blouse that looked somehow fluid.
Her hair was down, all tumbled and wild as if she’d just pulled the pins from it.
And indeed, as he watched she flipped it back and looped it through a wide elastic band.
He decided the best place in the universe for his hands to be were in his pockets.
“Lessons over?”
She glanced back, her hands still up in her hair. Ah, she thought. She’d wondered how long it would take him to wander her way again. “Why? Did you want one?”
He frowned, but caught himself before he shifted his feet. “I said I’d give you a hand over here.”
“So you did. As it happens I could use one. You did say you could ride, didn’t you?”
“I did, and I do.”
“Good.” Perfect. She gestured toward a big bay.
“Mule really needs a workout. If you take him, I’ll be able to give Sam some exercise, too.
Neither of them has had enough the last couple of days.
I’m sure I have tack that’ll suit you.” She opened a box door and led out the already saddled Sam. “We’ll wait in the paddock.”
As they clipped out, Brian eyed Mule, Mule eyed Brian. “She’s a bossy one, isn’t she now?” Then with a shrug, Brian headed to the tack room to find a saddle that suited him.
She was cantering around the paddock when he came out, her body so tuned to the horse they might have been one figure. With the slightest shift in rhythm and angle, she took her mount over three jumps. Cantering still, she started the next circle, then spotted Brian. She slowed, stopped.
“Ready?”
For an answer, he swung into the saddle. “Why are you all done up today?”
“It was picture day. We take photographs of the classes. The kids and the parents like it. Mule’s up for a good run, if you are.”
“Then let’s have at it.” With a tap of his heels he sent the horse out of the open gate at an easy trot.
“How are the ribs?” she asked as she came up beside him.
“They’re all right.” They were driving him mad, because every time he felt a twinge he remembered her hands on him.
“I’m told the yearling training’s coming along well, and Betty’s one of the star pupils—as predicted.”
“She has the thirst. All the training in the world can’t give a horse the thirst to race. We’ll be giving her a taste of the starting gate shortly, see how she does with it.”
Keeley headed up a gentle slope where trees were still lush and green despite the encroaching fall.
“I’d use Foxfire with her,” she said casually.
“He’s a sturdy one, with lots of experience.
He loves to charge out of the gate. She sees him do it a couple of times, she won’t want to be left behind. ”
He’d already decided on Foxfire as Betty’s gate tutor, but shrugged. “I’m thinking about it. So... have I passed the audition here, Miss Grant?”
Keeley lifted a brow, and a smile ghosted around her mouth as she looked Brian over. She’d been checking his form, naturally. “Well, you’re competent enough at a trot.” With a light tap, she sent Sam into a canter. The minute Brian matched her pace, she headed into a gallop.
Oh, she missed this. Every day she couldn’t fly out across the fields, over the hills, was a sacrifice. There was nothing to match it—the thrill of speed, the power soaring under her, through her, the thunder of hooves and the whip of wind.
She laughed as Brian edged by her. She’d seen the quick grin of challenge, and answered it by letting Sam have his head.
It was like watching magic take wing, Brian thought.
The muscular black horse soared over the ground with the woman on his back.
They streaked over another rise, moving west, into the dying sun.
The sky was a riot of color, a painting slashed with reds and golds.
It seemed to him she would ride straight into it, through it.
And he’d have no choice but to follow her.
When she pulled up, turned to wait for him, her face flushed with pleasure, her eyes gleaming with it, he knew he’d never seen the like.
And wanting her was apt to kill him.
“I should’ve given you a handicap,” she called out. “Mule runs like a demon, but he’s no match for this one.” She leaned over the saddle to pat Sam’s neck. She straightened, shook her hair back. “Gorgeous out, isn’t it?”
“Hot as blazes,” Brian corrected. “How long does summer last around here?”
“As long as it likes. Mornings are getting chilly, though, and once the sun dips down behind the hills, it’ll cool off quickly enough. I like the heat. Your Irish blood’s not used to it yet.”
She turned Sam so she could look down at Royal Meadows. “It’s beautiful from up here, isn’t it?”
The buildings spread out, neat, elegant, with the white fences of the paddocks, the brown oval, the horses being led to the stable. A trio of weanlings, all legs and energy, raced in the near pasture.
“From down there, too. It’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
That made her smile. “Wait till you see it in winter, with snow on the hills and the sky thick and gray with more—or so blue it hurts your eyes to look at it. And the foalings start and there are babies trying out their legs. When I was little, I couldn’t wait to run down and see them in the morning. ”
They began to walk again, companionably now, as the light edged toward dusk. She hadn’t expected to be so comfortable with him. Aware, yes, she always seemed aware of him now. But this simple connection, a quiet evening ride, was a pleasure.
“Did you have horses when you were a boy?”
“No, we never owned them. But it wasn’t so far to the track, and my father’s a wagering man.”
“And are you?”
He tilted his face toward her. “I like playing the odds, and fortunately, have a better feel for them than my father. He loved the look of them, and the rush of a race, but never did he gain any understanding of horses.”
“You didn’t gain any, either,” Keeley said and had him frowning at her. “What you’ve got you were born with. Just like them,” she added, gesturing toward the weanlings.
“I think that’s a compliment.”
“I don’t mind giving them when they’re fact.”
“Well, fact or fiction, horses have been the biggest part of my life. I remember going along with my da and seeing the horses. When he could manage it, he liked to go early, check out the field, talk with the clockers and the grooms, get himself a feel for things—or so he said. He lost his money more often as not. It was the process that appealed to him.”
That, and the flask in his pocket, Brian thought, but with tolerance. His father had loved the horses and the whiskey. And his mother had understood neither.
“One of the first times I went along, I saw an exercise boy, a very young lad, ponying a sorrel around the track. And I thought, there, that’s it.
That’s what I want to do, for there can’t be anything better than doing that for your life and your living.
And while I was still young enough, and small enough, I slid out of going to school as often as it could be managed and hitched rides to the track to hustle myself. Walk hots, muck stalls, whatever.”
“It’s romantic.”
He caught himself. He hadn’t meant to ramble on that way, but the ride, the evening, the whole of it made him sentimental. When he started to laugh at her statement, she shook her head.
“No, it is. People who aren’t a part of the world of it don’t understand, really. The hard work, the disappointments, the sweat and blood. Freezing predawn workouts, bruises and pulled muscles.”
“And that’s romantic.”
“You know it is.”
This time he did laugh, because she’d pegged him.
“As a boy, when I hung around the shedrow, I’d see the horses come back through the mist of morning, steam rising off their backs, the sound of them growing louder, coming at you before ever you could see them.
They’d slip out of the fog like something out of a dream.
Then, I thought it the most romantic thing in the world. ”
“And now?”
“Now, I know it is.”
He broke into a canter, riding with her until the lights of Royal Meadows began to flicker on and glow. He hadn’t expected to spend a comfortable, contented hour in her company, and found it odd that underlying all the rest that buzzed between them they’d seemed to have formed a kind of friendship.
He’d been friends with women before, and was well on the way to being convinced he’d do just fine keeping it all on a friendly level with Keeley. He was the one who’d initiated the sexual charge, so it seemed reasonable and right that he be the one to dampen it again.
The logic of it, and the ride, relaxed him. By the time they reached the stables to cool down the horses, he was in an easy mood and thinking about his supper.
Since she was interested, he told her of the yearling training, the progress, the five-year-old mare with colic, and the weanling with ringbone.
Together they watered the horses, and while Brian took the saddles and bridles to the tack room, Keeley set up the small hay nets and set out the grooming kits.