Hard Day's Knight (12 page)

“I feel like one. Now are you getting on that horse and learning how to spear rings, or are you going to be one of
them
?”

I looked at Cassie. She sniffled my T-shirt, obviously looking for carrots. I pushed her nose away. “My mother always said I shouldn’t turn down an opportunity to learn something new, so I guess it won’t kill me to learn how to joust. But don’t get the idea that I’m going to do this in competition or anything! I was just lucky to hit that quintain, and I know I’m going to suck at this.”

“If you have a losing attitude, you’ve already lost the battle.” Righteousness dripped from her words as she placed the rest of the rings.

“This is ridiculous. How do I get myself into these situations?” I grumbled as I gathered the reins and hoisted myself up and into the saddle. “I’m deranged, that’s all there is to—ow! Hey, let go of my sock!”

I leaned down to slap at Cassie’s nose. She had reached back and grabbed the scrunchy sock bagging around my ankle while I had my leg stuck forward in order to tighten the girth. “Let go of me, you monster on four hooves! What is it with you Canadian animals eating cloth?”

Cassie took one last swipe at my socks, then nickered when I jerked my foot out of the range of her huge horse teeth.

“Stop teasing the horse and pay attention,” Bliss said as she appeared on Cassie’s off side, her hand squeezing my right knee for a second to add emphasis to her words. “Your goal is to spear as many rings as you can. We’ve used the big six-inchers, so it shouldn’t be too hard. We’ll try it first at a walk, then a trot, then a canter. All set? Stirrups okay? Good. Keep your eye on the rings, your lance up, and your back straight. Good luck!”

You’d think spearing a big white ring hanging absolutely dead still off a pole while at a walk would be a relatively easy thing, wouldn’t you? I’m here to tell you it isn’t. For some reason—and I can attribute this only to my aforementioned derangedness—I could not for the life of me spear the rings while walking,
or
at a trot, but I nailed all six of the little buggers the first time I urged Cassie into a canter.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Bliss said, shaking her head as I rode over to her after forty minutes of frustration at a walk and a trot, triumphantly brandishing my lance full of rings.

“Not one single morsel of sense,” Bos agreed, scratching his head thoughtfully as he looked down the list at the empty hooks. “Maybe that lance is warped, too, like the one I had yesterday that almost gutted Butcher’s horse?”

Bliss rubbed her arms, a frown pulling her brows together. “I checked them all earlier, and they were fine.”

“Well, Walker always did say that the harder he tried to aim, the worse he got. Maybe Pepper has the same sort of eye that he has.”

The two exchanged looks full of portent.

“I saw that,” I said, pointing at them. “Just what was that supposed to mean?”

Bliss pursed her lips and absently patted Cassie when the horse bumped her, looking for treats. “It means nothing.”

Bos grinned at me.

“Oh, like I just fell off the stupid wagon? I know a look full of meaning when I see one. What is going on with Walker? Why do you guys smile and look like you’ve got a secret whenever his name is mentioned?”

Bliss grabbed Cassie’s bridle and led us out of the ring past a group of people who were wearing
Knight’s Bane World Jousting Grand Championship and Renaissance Faire
T-shirts, busily dragging all sorts of pennants, sound equipment, and assorted banners into the main arena.

“You seem to be very interested in Walker,” Bliss said as we walked toward the stable assigned to the Three Dog Knight team, stopping just long enough to collect Moth and sling him up to my lap. “Is there a reason for your questions about him?”

When in doubt, play stupid, that’s my motto. “Me? Interested? Do you mean, like,
interested
?”

“Do you think he’s hot?” Bos asked, then made a face when Bliss shot him a warning look. “What? I can ask her that, can’t I? What’s wrong with finding out if she thinks he’s attractive?”

Clearly my stupid ploy wasn’t going to work. Instead, I’d go on the defense. “Oh, I get it! CJ told you what I said, didn’t she? She told you all about my quest to find a dashing, daring, brave man so I wouldn’t have to date out of the software-geek pool, and now you guys are trying to match me up with Walker, despite the fact that the man hates my guts.”

Bos grinned. “He doesn’t hate your guts, Pepper.”

Bliss rolled her eyes.

I rolled mine right along with her. “Oh, right, that’s why he wouldn’t even wait for me to come over and thank him for giving me quintain advice. Look, I appreciate the help, but even CJ thinks that Walker is all wrong for me, so you guys can just stop sending each other those looks full of meaning—hey, you did it again!—and mellow out.”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about, do we, Bliss?”

“Ha! Oh, ha! I laugh at that. No, I scoff, I
scoff
at such a blatant mistruth. You guys are up to something, and it concerns Walker and me, and you can just forget it, because if you’ll excuse the metaphor, that horse isn’t going to run.”

“So you don’t like Walker?” Bos asked, walking on my off side, the long tips of the two lances he’d brought bobbing along in time to the muted
clump, clump, clump
of Cassie’s hoofbeats.

Bliss stopped outside the big double door that yawned darkly into the stable’s interior, and held up an arm for Moth. I plopped him into her grasp and swung down, stepping back quickly out of reach as Cassie whipped her head around to grab at my T-shirt. “Dammit, horse, leave me alone! I’ll get you a carrot, okay?”

Bos peered over the saddle at me as Bliss dropped the reins and sat on her heels next to the stable door, stroking Moth’s back in a manner that had him drooling from one side of his mouth. I took Bliss’s cocked eyebrow to mean that I was expected to give Cassie a rubdown. Lovely. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more than to place myself within eating range of a horse who clearly was unable to tell the difference between hay and human.

I fumbled with the girth buckle as I answered Bos. “Like Walker?
Like Walker?
What’s to like about him? I may not have known him for very long, but aside from the fact that he did save my life, I’d have to say that he’s the grouchiest, crabbiest, most misanthropic person it’s ever been my misfortune to be rescued by. He’s conceited, arrogant, and obviously doesn’t have brains in that melon he calls a head to get out of a sport that has done him so much damage. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’s also one of those men who is clearly afraid of commitment, is threatened by a woman who is strong enough to take him on, is too blind to see when someone just doesn’t like horses as opposed to being afraid of them”—Bos stared at me with huge eyes—“and . . . and . . . he’s behind me, isn’t he?”

Bos nodded.

I pulled the saddle and pad off Cassie’s back and turned around with a smile plastered to my face. “Why, hello there, Walker. We were just talking about you. Ow! Right, that’s it, horse, you’re dog meat—”

“Stop threatening the horse. She, at least, is innocent,” Walker said, stroking his hand down Cassie’s face as I rubbed my butt where she had nipped me.

“Just like a man to take her side,” I complained. “Where do you keep the saddles?”

“I’ll take it,” Bos said, hurrying forward.

“We have a rule—those who use the equipment clean up after themselves. That includes grooming the horses. I’m sure Pepper, with her superior knowledge of both horses and men, can manage to handle a saddle on her own,” Walker said, still stroking Cassie’s long face. I swear, the man murmured love words in her ear. “The tack room is on the left, fourth door along. Don’t forget to wipe the saddle down.”

By the time I had found the tack room, cleaned up the saddle, and shaken out the saddle pad, I had worked out most of my embarrassment at being caught by Walker saying things I’d rather he had not heard me say—which, of course, translated into my saying even more nasty things, albeit under my breath so only the horses could hear me.

“The tack is clean,” I announced as I stepped from the cool, dark confines of the stable out into the clear morning sun. “Would you care to inspect it, or will you just trust that I know how to clean a saddle?”

Walker was currying Cassie while Moth lay curled up on a nearby wooden bench watching the object of his affection with an avid eye. Bliss and Bos had disappeared, probably off to plot whatever it was they were planning for Walker and me. Ha! I could tell them that
that
would come to nothing. Which was really a shame, when you thought about it . . .

“I’ll check the saddle later,” Walker said, intent on brushing Cassie.

“I didn’t doubt that for a moment. What happened to the ‘you ride her, you clean her’ rule?” I asked, scooping up a soft finishing brush to go over the side of Cassie he’d already done.

He grunted something that I took to mean he didn’t trust me to know how to groom a horse properly.

“Walker.”

He looked up, his face in shadow, since his back was to the angled morning sunlight. I don’t know if it was the combination of his light silvery eyes and the thick black lashes, or his dark hair, or his enticing mouth and jaw, or the whole package altogether, but just having his attention on me was almost as intense an experience as if he were stroking my bare skin. I shivered, dragging my mind from where it was happily frolicking in a land made up of Walker doing just that, and forced it back to reality. I gestured toward Cassie with my brush. “I
do
know how to groom a horse.”

“Bliss told me it wasn’t your idea to ride this morning,” he said before resuming currying, which I gathered was an apology for his abrupt manner earlier.

Since my own manners were more than a little lacking, I felt guilty enough to continue doing my share of the work. I brandished my brush with enthusiasm, smoothing down her already glossy gray rear quarters, wondering if Cassie would kick me if I tried to comb out her tail. “No, it wasn’t my idea, but it was kind of fun, and Cassie only tried to eat me twice, so it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Well, maybe the first part of it was bad, but the last pass—when I nailed all six rings—was fun.”

“You what?” His head popped up over the top of Cassie’s back at my words. She had been munching happily out of a grain bucket, but at his unexpected, quick move she did a little sidestep that had her shifting toward me.

“Got all six—Aiiiieeeeee! She’s on my foot, she’s on my foot, get off me, you damned brute of a horse!” I did a little one-footed dance of pain as Cassie stepped squarely onto my right foot. “I knew it! I just knew it! Horses hate me! They always step on me!
Get off of me!”

I threw myself at her rear quarters, slapping at her big horse butt in an attempt to push her off, tears pricking behind my eyes. My foot felt as though it were caught in a waffle iron, a red-hot waffle iron.
“Off, off, off,
you great big mean bully of a horse!”

“Horses don’t like to be yelled at,” Walker said as he strolled around Cassie as if he had all the time in the world.

“Don’t they? Well perhaps we can swap horse tips later, while I’m in the hospital having my foot amputated,” I snarled as he casually put his right hand on her hip, and reached down with his left to slide his hand down her back leg.

When he got to the fetlock, all he said was, “Up,” and—blessed Saint Hippolytus—Cassie lifted her foot off of mine.

“For someone who claims to have lots of experience with horses, you certainly don’t seem to know how to handle yourself around them,” Walker said as he watched me hobble over to a bale of hay before ripping my shoe off to see how many of my toes were broken. “The first thing any farrier learns is how to ask a horse to pick up its leg.”

Fortunately my leather tennis shoes took most of the damage, leaving me with nothing more than a bruised foot. I wiggled my toes just to make sure they were intact. “It may have escaped your notice, but I am not a farrier.” I ground my teeth a bit as I crammed my foot back into the tennis shoe, then cursed luridly as the abused limb protested such a cavalier action.

His eyebrows went up when I limped over to him, poking my finger into his chest as I snapped out, “And you can just wipe that ‘I’m a farrier; I know horses and you don’t’ look off your face, because this is all your fault.”

“
My
fault—” he started to say.

“Yes, yours!” Admittedly, I was speaking in a bit of a loud voice, but if anyone was deserving of the opportunity to yell at him, I was. “You, Mr. Horse Expert of 2005, purposely jumped up and startled Cassie so she’d stomp on my foot. And you can stop widening your eyes like you can’t believe what I’m saying, because I’m not buying your innocent act for one minute. You’ve had it in for me ever since you rescued me and I told you how sexy you were, and how nice you smelled, and for your information, that’s not at all how a real knight acts!”

“Sexy? When did you tell me I was sexy? You never told me I was sexy, you daft woman. All you do is argue with me, and unless you’re into some very kinky things, arguing seldom serves as foreplay.”

“You think not, huh?” I asked, confused by conflicting emotions. I wanted to be mad at him for the way he refused to challenge me, but with every passing second, my irritation morphed into something much more pleasant. Damn the man—he must have bathed in pheromones that morning, because just being close to him had every inch of me on alert, my body pleading with my brain for permission to do all sorts of wicked, unmentionable things to him. I took a step closer. “You’re just saying that because you can’t admit the truth to yourself. They have a word for that, you know—it’s called denial.”

“Denial?” he snorted, his beautiful eyes flashing as he moved toward me, so close that my breasts were just a hairbreadth away from his chest. “I am most definitely not in denial. Denial about what?”