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Authors: Carolyn McSparren

Mr. Miracle (Harlequin Super Romance) (23 page)

BOOK: Mr. Miracle (Harlequin Super Romance)
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She nodded. “How did you trace the stallion to Germany?”
He inhaled audibly. “Can we go into the office and sit down?”
“I don’t think so.”
“All right, then I’ll sit.” He crossed to the bench by the wash rack and sank onto it as though his legs were too weak to hold him.
“Well?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t trace him all the way to Germany—not until a month ago. Oh, I tried. I had most of the horse community of Europe on the lookout for him, posted rewards, put ads in trade papers—everything I could think of. There were reports of horses that might be Roman from time to time, but none of them panned out.”
“But you kept looking?”
“I owed it to Jock. You can’t know what it was like for me to lose Jock’s prize, the culmination of his life’s work. Much worse than to lose this.” He held up his gloved hand. “The worst sort of betrayal of all the trust he’d put in me.”
“His own son betrayed him, not you.”
“Not the way I saw it—see it.”
“So you searched. How could you know that a yearling foal would turn out to be special?”
“I had to find out, don’t you see? For all I knew Roman was dead or gelded or pulling a beer cart somewhere, but I had to know for certain. And if he was Jock’s great horse, then before God I swore I’d bring him home whatever it took. I made a vow to see his first foal on the ground to greet the millenium. I came here intending to keep that vow.”
“Even if it meant theft.”
“Yes. Jock left me his dream when he left me McLachlan Yard. That was his real legacy.”
“Not the sense of honor he tried to instill in you?”
“You’ve no idea how terrible a dilemma it was for me to balance his sense of right and wrong against my obligation.”
“In the end obligation won out.”
“Yes. Or at least I thought it did. Before I met you.”
She ignored the last words. “So how did you finally locate the stallion?”
“A friend of mine called from the auction in Belgium. He said some farmer had showed up out of the blue with a single mare who wasn’t worth much and a stallion that was the size of the moon, solid black. He’d seen Roman as a yearling. Even after two years, he said he thought he recognized him. I was on the next plane.”
“But you were too late.”
“By one day. The farmer had disappeared and the stallion was on an airplane to quarantine in Kentucky. I bribed one of the officials to give me the name and address of the man who’d bought him. Whitten. At first I intended to call him and offer to buy the horse, but my friend told me he’d bought the stallion for his wife and paid a hell of a lot for him. I was afraid I’d never have enough money.”
“Why didn’t you just call Mike and explain the situation?”
“Roman was stolen as a yearling, Vic. He’d never been tattooed or branded or even blood-typed. We didn’t have pictures of the whorls of hair on his neck or the chestnuts on his front legs. He was solid black, so there were no stars or blazes or white socks to identify. There was no way to prove, short of gut instinct, that this horse was Roman. And it could so easily be a scam. Would you have believed me if I’d shown up here and told you to deliver my stolen stallion on only my say-so?”
“Probably not.”
“Besides, how could I be certain he was worth all the trouble? Jock could have been wrong. I had to ride him, but more than that, I had to watch someone else ride him.”
Vic shut her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “Oh, God. That’s why you had to get me back on a horse.” She shook her head. “Not because you understood panic or gave a damn about me as a person, but because you needed to see someone ride your stallion for you.”
He was on his feet in an instant. “No, lass! That’s not true.”
“Stay away from me, please.”
“All right. Maybe it was true when I first met you, but not the moment I held you in my arms the first time.”
“Is anything you’ve said true?”
“It’s true that I love you. It’s true that I want to marry you.”
“It’s true that you’re planning to steal Roman.”
“No, dammit. Why do you think I’ve had Hamish breaking his balls trying to get together enough money to offer Mike Whitten a profit? Because no matter how good my plan was, after I met you, fell in love with you, I couldn’t steal from you. I couldn’t betray you that way.”
“Oh? But lying to me was acceptable?” She slipped past him and walked to the door of the arena, then stood with her back to him for a moment before she turned to look at him again. “So how did you plan to get him to Scotland? I’m interested, I really am.”
He looked stricken. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer, but then he shrugged and said, “I have a friend who raises horses on the Texas border. The arrangements are all made. I just have to call him. He shows up the following night with a horse trailer, he drives Roman to Texas and straight across the border into Mexico. He drives horses back and forth all the time. Nobody questions him. He’s legitimate, and he’s already got papers showing that Roman belongs to him. Once he’s in Mexico, he transfers the papers to me, puts the horse on a plane, and Roman lands in Glasgow and goes into quarantine twelve hours later.”
“Simple. Just a few minor matters of theft, smuggling and forgery. The only person who suffers is Mike.”
“Albert told me Roman is insured for the full amount of the purchase price. Mike wouldn’t be out any money. Besides, I had every intention of paying him for the horse the moment I could.”
“Anonymously of course,” Vic said dryly. “Wouldn’t do to let him know where his property had finished up. And you slip away with your Texan buddy?”
“No. I planned to stay here at least a few days to allay suspicion. Vic, believe me, this all changed after I met you, after I fell in love with you.”
“Why should I believe you?” She closed her eyes. “The first night you slept in my house, when we played poker, you told me all about my ‘tells.’ If you have any tells, I haven’t been able to recognize them. I can’t look at your face or your hands and say, ‘Okay, now he’s telling the truth.’ Or, ‘Okay, now he’s lying.’ That makes every word out of your mouth suspect. I’ll never ever be able to trust you, Jamey. How can I love a man I don’t trust? How can I ever believe you truly love me?”
This time he did go to her and take her by the shoulders. “Believe this if you don’t believe anything else. The hell with the horse. The only thing that matters is that I love you and you love me.”
“You don’t know how I long to believe you.”
“Do you really think I’m the kind of man who can make love to a woman the way I’ve made love to you without caring for her? That I’m some sort of...gigolo?”
“Yesterday I would have said no. Now I don’t know. That makes better sense than that a man like you would fall head over heels for a woman like me.”
“God in heaven, woman! What man wouldn’t love you? Beautiful, gallant, so sensual you take my breath away—”
“Stop it.”
He dropped his hands. “Do you want me out of here tonight?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I still have horses to exercise and a stable to run.” She pushed past him. “I don’t feel much like riding tonight. I’ll leave the front door unlocked.” She turned and gave him a cool gaze. “I’d prefer that you sleep upstairs in the guest room.” She turned on her heel. “There’re leftovers in the refrigerator. I don’t think I want any dinner.”
“Vic!” he called after her. “We can’t leave things this way.”
She kept walking.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
J
AMEY SLEPT wrapped in a horse blanket on bales of hay. As much as he longed to follow Vic to her house, he felt he’d forfeited the right. Besides, he wanted to catch Albert before Vic appeared in the morning. Although he was certain he’d never sleep again, he did, for Albert woke him at six-thirty in the morning.
“What’s the matter with you?” Albert asked. “What you doing down here?”
Jamey sat up sleepily. He felt the stubble on his cheeks and brushed hay from his hair. “I’m waiting for my beating.”
“Huh?”
“You said if I hurt her, you’d break my neck.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I’ve got to talk to you.”
Albert sighed. “Come on into the lounge. Even the condemned deserve a cup of coffee on a morning like this.”
Jamey sat in the easy chair with his elbows on his knees. Albert bustled about making coffee, and the moment it began to drip, came across and sank onto the aging sofa, which creaked ominously under his weight.
“Now.”
Jamey laid out the whole story without embellishment or justification.
When he was through, Albert leaned back and sighed deeply. “Damn. All this for a blockheaded stallion?”
Jamey nodded. “My stepfather’s stallion.”
“You sure it’s him?”
“As sure as a man can be.”
“You got yourself into a mess and then some. Boy, why didn’t you just tell her right out the minute you knew for certain?”
“I couldn’t find the right moment. No. The real answer is that I thought she’d never find out, never have to think badly of me.”
“You are one dumb Scot. What you going to do?”
“I need your help.”
Albert narrowed his eyes. “I won’t help you get that horse.”
Jamey waved him away. “Forget the horse. What matters is Vic. Help me convince her to keep riding and that I’m not lying when I say I love her.”
“Why should I do that?”
“Because you love her, too. I hope you don’t want me to tell you I’ll walk away. I can’t do that. I intend to fight for her.”
“Go right ahead. Meantime you call Mike Whitten this minute and tell him exactly what you’ve told me. Time we got all the secrets out in the open.”
Jamey groaned. “It’s not going to make me much of a hit on the relative front, is it?”
“You didn’t make a hit yesterday. I don’t know how I can convince Vic of anything. I never could before.”
“I’ll tell Whitten in any case. Just help me keep her riding, then. She needs that.”
Albert looked at him for a long moment. “You really do love her, don’t you?”
Jamey nodded.
“And you want to take her away from us and off to Scotland.”
Jamey nodded again. “That, too. But planes fly both ways. It’s not as though I were taking her to the moon.”
“As good as, way she feels about airplanes.” Albert put his big hands on his knees and hauled himself to his feet. “Might not be a bad thing for her to move to Scotland. Got herself in a rut here. Meeting everybody else’s expectations. Time for a change.”
He walked to the door. Jamey stared after him with his mouth open.
“The number of Whitten’s apartment is in Vic’s notebook in the top drawer of the desk in the office,” Albert went on. “If you’re gonna catch him before he leaves to go back to Florida this morning, you better call now.”
“Man, it’s only seven in the morning.”
“He’s up. Call him.”
Whitten was indeed up. Jamey asked if he could meet him at the airport before his flight left.
“Plans are changed.” Whitten sounded cool. “Liz is flying in here, instead. She arrives at three this afternoon.”
Jamey closed his eyes. Whitten must have told her about him and Vic. And like an angry parent she’d hopped the first flight home. This was going to be worse than he’d imagined.
“There’s a coffee shop in Germantown at Poplar. Can you meet me there in half an hour?”
Jamey agreed, then realized he looked like a burn. “Make it forty minutes,” he said, and hung up. Nothing for it but to go back to the house to shower, shave and change clothes. One part of him longed to see Vic; the other part wanted to avoid her at all costs, at least until he’d seen Whitten.
Should he tell her Liz was coming into town?
He drove his motorcycle up the hill and nearly ran into Vic driving down in her truck. She pointedly ignored him. One problem solved. If she wouldn’t speak to him, he wouldn’t have any opportunity to tell her about Liz.
Whitten was already sitting in a back booth reading the
Wall Street Journal
when Jamey arrived. The two men shook hands perfunctorily. It was the first time Mike had taken his hand, and he glanced at Jamey’s single black glove with curiosity. Jamey explained quickly, ordered a cup of coffee and some orange juice, and tried to figure out how to start.
“I’ve a story to tell you,” he said finally. “A fairly long story, and one that doesn’t reflect very well on me. It’s the truth, though you’ve no reason to believe me.”
Mike nodded. “Go ahead.”
Ten minutes later Jamey took a deep drink of his orange juice to try to allay the terrible dryness in his mouth, sat back and opened his hands. “That’s it. The whole sorry tale.”
For a moment Whitten said nothing. Then he nodded. “I had a feeling about that old farmer from the beginning. That he was more than he said he was.”
“You believe me, then?”
“About the stallion? Oh, yes, I believe you, all right. Doesn’t mean I intend to turn him over to you without a whimper.”
“You’re missing the point. This stopped being about the stallion a long time ago.”
“Really?” Mike didn’t sound convinced.
“I’ve spent my life with Jock’s dream for his stallion. I thought it was the most important thing in his life. Now I know I was wrong.”
“Then what was?”
“Oh, he wanted to create his dream stallion, all right. But he had the time to spend on that because he’d already attained his real dream—my mother’s love. I knew they loved each other, but until now I didn’t have a clue what that love truly meant to his life.”
“And now you do,” Mike said flatly. His disbelief was almost palpable.
Jamey took a deep breath to keep a lid on his temper. He had to make this man understand.
“So do you. So does Albert. So, for that matter, does Kevin Womack. You’re each secure in the knowledge that the woman you love, the woman who is central to your existence, loves you, is wedded to you and will be with you for life.”
“Vic’s older than you.”
“So what?”
“She can’t give you children.”
“I wasn’t Jock’s natural son, but he was as much my father as the man whose genes I carried. Biological paternity means nothing to me. If I want an heir, there’re appropriate cousins coming out of the woodwork in my family. The point is, Vic and I are at the same place in our lives.”
“She already has a life,” Mike said. “If you love her so much, how can you wrench her away from the people who love her? Take her to another world, where she’ll be surrounded by strangers?”
“That’s simple logistics. Something she and I will have to work out. Frankly I don’t care where we live so long as it’s together.”
“And so long as you can lay claim to her share of ValleyCrest?”
“I don’t want ValleyCrest. I’ve more than got my hands full with McLachlan Yard. Draw up an ironclad prenuptial agreement to protect her from my thieving Gypsy ways. I’ll sign it.”
“So tell me, just how do you see her new life, this life you so cavalierly want to drag her away to?”
“I don’t see her new life at all. I see our new life, and it’s whatever we want to make of it together.”
“She’s too old to simply pick up and move half a world away.”
“She’s not much older than you, and I understand you’ve changed pretty fundamentally of late. I don’t want her to lose anything by marrying me—I want her to gain. But I’ll fight you for her if I have to. My stepfather and mother fought both their families for their love. It’s a tradition.”
Mike nodded at the waitress, who refilled both their coffee cups. He sat back and stirred cream into his. “All right, McLachlan. I’ll make you a proposition. You came here for that stallion. Take him. I’ll have him on the next plane back to quarantine in Glasgow. I’ll sign over the papers to you this morning. You’ll leave with what you came for.”
Jamey pulled out his wallet and threw a bill on the table, then stood. “I know you mean well. That’s why I’m not going to break your jaw.”
Mike’s eyebrows shot up.
“A month ago I would have jumped at the chance. Keep your stallion, Whitten. There’ll be other horses. But there’ll never be another Vic, not for me.”
He drove back to Vic’s cottage and packed. Whatever happened, he couldn’t stay in her house any longer. If by some miracle they managed to patch things up, he could always move back in.
At this point what mattered most was that she continue to ride, that she keep her panic attacks at bay. Even if he had to sleep on the hay until Saturday, he intended for her to ride that dressage class on Roman. He’d be at ringside whistling and humming to keep them both calm. He couldn’t leave until he’d helped her achieve that.
But he couldn’t stay, either.
Vic’s truck was gone when he drove his motorcycle back to the barn.
“Said she had to get out of here,” Albert said. “Didn’t want to see you. You talk to Whitten?”
“Yes. He offered to give me Roman if I’d leave.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I turned him down.”
“Uh-huh. You got horses to ride.”
“Whitten says his wife is coming into town this afternoon.”
“Liz? Boy, you’ve really done it now. Vic is as close to a mother as that child’s got. You think she’s gonna let you waltz in here and mess up Vic’s head and heart, you got another think coming. Mike’s a pussycat compared to Liz when she’s on a rampage.”
Jamey concentrated on his riding while keeping an eye out for Mike and Liz.
Just after lunch Angie and Kevin showed up. “I wanted to show Kevin Boop’s new lover,” Angie said. “And look!” She waved her arm at Jamey. “It’s still sore, but I can ride in a brace. No more stupid scarf thingies.”
“Wonderful. Good timing.”
“You’re not really going back to Scotland this soon, are you?” Angie asked.
“I don’t know what my plans are at the moment, lass.”
“Well, we know what ours are, don’t we, Kev?” She beamed at her husband. “I can’t wait to tell Vic. Our baby’s arriving in ten days.”
“How do you feel about that?” Jamey asked Kevin.
“Fine, I guess.” He smiled at his wife. “Frankly I’m scared to death.”
“Not surprising,” Jamey said. He handed the reins of the gray mare to Albert. “I’ll work the stallion for you, if you’d like to see him.”
“Oh, yes, please!” Angie said. “Kev’s not really all that scared about our baby, are you, honey?”
Kevin smiled weakly.
Jamey clapped him on the shoulder. “I was raised by a man who plunked me onto the back of a horse when I was six months old. I never thought of him as anything other than my father, and he always thought of me as his son. Real fathers give more to their children than a bit of genetic material. She’ll be your daughter the moment you hold her in your arms, man. That I promise you.”
Kevin brightened. “I didn’t know you were adopted.” “More like kidnapped. And glad of it. Your daughter will come right if you love her. I did.” He turned to Angie. “Feel up to giving me a hand with the stallion?”
“Yes. Oh, yes!” She hooked her arm through his and strode off down the aisle beside him. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Kev needed to hear that.”
 
VIC
SAT OUTSIDE THE BARN in her truck, unwilling to open the door and face Jamey. She ought to be able to stop loving him, but she couldn’t. He’d lied to her so much and hurt her more deeply than she had guessed. Had he lied when he said he loved her? Wanted to marry her? Take her to Scotland?
She didn’t see much point in that kind of lie for him. Did she believe that he had given up the idea of stealing the stallion? Yes, but more because he wasn’t capable of that sort of duplicity than out of love for her. It had been a crazy scheme to start with. He must have been slightly mad—on his stepfather’s hobbyhorse, as Marshall Dunn would say.
None of that offered a solution. She couldn’t simply walk into the barn, say, “All is forgiven, I’m off to Scotland with you.” And he obviously couldn’t stay in Tennessee.
She climbed out of her car just as Mike Whitten’s rental car pulled in beside her. The passenger door opened and Liz flew out. “Vic!” Liz said, and grabbed her.
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