The Lonesome Young (7 page)

There was a long silence, and then Gran started laughing. “Well, after that flood of information, I have to wonder if you’re always such a blabbermouth.”

“What about you?” I countered. “How are
you
adjusting?”

She didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about. “It’s going to take some getting used to,” she admitted. “Your father . . . he has a forceful personality, and he always thinks he should be in charge.”

“But you’ve been running this place on your own for a long time,” I said.

“Yes. Well, with Pete’s help. I don’t know what I’d do without him, and I’m afraid your father will drive him to drink. Or to leave.”

It was one of the things I loved about Gran; she’d always been straightforward with me. Except now it was making me worry.

“You won’t make
us
leave?”

I left the rest of it unspoken: We didn’t have anywhere else to go.

She reached out and laid one thin, blue-veined hand on mine. “Never. You’re my blood. My home is your home, for as long as you want it.”

I squeezed her hand with the thanks that was stuck in my throat, and she nodded and squeezed back.

By the time we’d almost reached home, I thought of another question I wanted to ask somebody who would give me a straight answer.

“Gran, what do you know about the Rhodale family? I met this boy, Mickey, and heard a pretty ugly rumor about him.” I didn’t know how to finish up the question, but when Gran didn’t immediately answer, I glanced over and saw that she was clenching her hands together so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

“Gran?”

“Please don’t
ever
speak that name to me again.”

Surprised, I turned to look at her, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze. Her clasped hands were shaking, her lips were pressed tightly together, and—for the first time in my entire life—she looked old to me.

“I’m sorry, Gran. I won’t, I promise.”

She nodded, a small, jerky movement. The conversation made me even more determined to get to the truth about Mickey Rhodale, but I’d leave her out of it.

By the time I pulled up next to the house and parked, Gran was looking more back to normal, and as we headed into the house we talked a little about what we’d make for lunch, since Mrs. Kennedy had Sundays off. But my mother met us at the door as if she’d been waiting for us. She pointed at me.

“You! You couldn’t stay here and sleep in like a normal teenager, could you?”

“What? What did I do?” My stomach plummeted.

“Your sister is . . . sick, and she threw up in the kitchen,” she said, looking even more pale and drawn than usual. “I had to
clean it up
.
I don’t know how to cope with this. Two daughters and neither of them is ever going to amount to anything. Melinda was getting better at home, and then we had to come here, and now—”

“Mom! She wasn’t getting better. She was just hiding it from everyone better,” I pointed out, as gently as I could.

“I liked it better when things were hidden,” my mother said, her shoulders slumping. With that, she trudged up the stairs, shaking her head when I called after her.

“What was that about? Did she mean she’d have made you clean up, if you’d been here?” Gran asked, putting her hands on her hips and glaring after Mom. “That woman is as useless as tits on a boar hog.”

I shook my head, miserable. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not really hungry anymore, either.”

“We’ll figure this out, honey. I promise,” she said, patting my back.

I shook my head. I didn’t believe that even Gran would be able to keep that promise.

• • •

I wandered out to the barn after changing out of my church clothes, looking for a little peace in the one place I was almost always sure to find it. Pete was there, of course, one foot propped on the bottom of the doorway to Sylvan’s Daughter’s stall.

“How’s she doing?” I walked up beside him and looked in at the pregnant mare. She tossed her glossy head and then reached her nose out to sniff me for treats.

“Good as can be expected. She’s not due till Christmas, but we like to keep an eye on her after she miscarried last year,” he said.

A miscarried foal was not only tragic for the mare but devastating for the people who’d raised her and cared for her—both emotionally and financially. Thoroughbred racehorses were, pound for pound, the most valuable creatures on the planet, and I knew well enough that the stud fee for Lucky Planet, who’d been the father of the lost foal, had been in the low six figures. Lucky Planet was racing royalty; three of his foals had been Derby contenders and at least another six had been great racers, here and overseas. His own career had been notable, but once a racing stallion retired and was set to breeding, his value was all about how many champions he sired.

Sylvan’s Daughter had a pretty great pedigree herself. She was distantly related to Secretariat, one of the greatest race horses of all time. Of course, all thoroughbreds could trace their ancestry back to the same three horses, so in a way they were all cousins.

I winced as I remembered trying to explain some of this to my friends at school, and how they went straight for the Kentucky inbreeding jokes. We were more of a stereotype than a state to outsiders, I’d learned early on in my freshman year.

“How’d Keeneland go?”

The Keeneland Yearling Sale was one of racing’s premier events. Each September, farms brought their horses and their hopes to central Kentucky, and buyers brought their checkbooks and their dreams of owning a champion. Maybe a Derby winner. Few dared to hope that a horse they owned might win the sport’s highest honor—the Triple Crown—but it was the slight chance that they might that kept the buyers coming back and spending hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on unproven foals.

“We sold two to Ireland, one to Dubai, and one right here to that guy who owns too many car dealerships.”

I glanced up at him, catching the hint of a grin. “The one whose wife wore the enormous hat with Hot Wheels cars on the brim to the Derby?”

He nodded. “Yeah, they’re idiots, but they hired the best trainer around. He’ll be sure that that foal out of Roseland’s Promise gets the best care in racing.”

I remembered watching the foal run, back in June. He’d raced around the paddock like he owned the place, and when he’d stretched out that long, elegant neck and really put his heart into it, he’d flown over the fields as if his hooves had been winged.

“He was really something,” I said, sighing. “I wish we trained them, too.”

Pete laughed, and Sylvan’s Daughter briefly pinned her ears back, signaling her displeasure at the unexpected sound, and then went back to nosing around in her food.

“Training them to race is a specialized skill. I’m just the one who brings healthy babies into the world.”

“We like healthy babies,” I agreed, reaching out a hand to stroke the mare’s silky nose.

She tossed her head again before allowing it, and I smiled at her. Life was a lot simpler for horses.

“What do you know about the Rhodale family? Mickey Rhodale, to be precise.” Maybe a blunt question would finally get me some answers.

“Are you all right? Did he do something to you? Did he touch you?” Pete fired out the questions in a hard voice I’d never heard from him before, and I turned to look at him, raising my eyebrows.

“In the approximately seven seconds I’ve known him, did he touch me?”

Pete grimaced, and I saw something shift behind his eyes. “I’m sorry for jumping on you like that. The boy got into some trouble, and it was bad.”

“How bad?”

“He put a couple of guys in the hospital. One of them will be in physical therapy for several months if he’s going to regain full use of his hand ever again,” he said flatly. “Stay away from him, Victoria. He’s trouble.”

“I have no plans to go anywhere near him. I just wondered, since I started hearing rumors—”

“Nasty rumors and cheap gossip. This county is perfect for both.” The bleak expression on his face made me wonder if he was thinking of something specific, but it also warned me not to ask. On impulse, I hugged him, something I hadn’t done since I was twelve and Daddy had told me that Whitfields “don’t hug the hired help.”

“I’m fine, Pete. Don’t worry about me. I have too much sense to fall for the town bad boy.”

He hugged me back and then headed toward his office, clearing his throat in a manly “I wasn’t all emotional over this” kind of way that made me grin at the back of his plaid shirt.

I gave the mare one last ear scratch and headed toward the door, but Pete’s voice stopped me.

“About Mickey Rhodale, Victoria. All you need to know is that you’d better stay far away from him. Don’t talk to your family about him, either, okay? We’ve had enough problems with Rhodales to last a lifetime.”

• • •

“No, no, no, no, no!” I pulled the stuttering old truck over to the side of the road and used up my admittedly limited supply of swear words.

The gas tank needle showed the tank was half full. Now that I thought about it, the needle had been showing the tank as half full for more than a week, and I hadn’t put any gas in it. Half full, half empty, all the way gone; the damn gas gauge must be broken.

There was a lesson in there somewhere about the global failure of optimism, but I was too annoyed to think about it.

I pulled out my phone and wondered who to call. Not Gran. I’d just dropped her off at her Sunday afternoon church group. Not my mother, who would shriek at me about personal responsibility and not know what to do. Not my father, who would expect me to handle it myself, if he even picked up a phone call from me in the middle of the day, which he probably wouldn’t. Not Pete, because he was taking a rare day off today.

Okay, Victoria, think.

I dialed information for Clark, Kentucky, and asked for a gas station. Gas stations had gas, right? And also usually trucks that towed people. Maybe somebody could bring me some gas, and I could pay them, and nobody else needed to know about this.

The operator put me through to Howard’s Gas Station, and I explained my dilemma to a cranky old man who sounded like he was approximately a hundred and ten.

“I’ll send the boy.”

“Thanks. But, ah, when do you expect—”

“He’ll be there when he gets there. If you’re in such an all-fired hurry, maybe you should have filled up your gas tank before you ran out.”

Click.

I stared at the phone in my hand for second, thinking evil thoughts about small-town businesses that had monopolies and therefore no need to be pleasant. Then I pulled my book bag closer and grabbed
To Kill a Mockingbird
, hunched down in the driver’s seat so nobody could see me, and prepared to wait.

An hour later, I was still waiting.

I sighed and started to call Pete after all, so he could send somebody after me, when a truck that was even older than mine pulled up behind me and a guy got out. My heart jumped into my throat when I realized it was Mickey
.

His tight black T-shirt advertised some beer I’d never heard of, and the sleeves left his muscular, tanned arms bare so I could see the ink encircling the top of his left arm. Somehow, that glimpse of tattoo made him even more intriguing.

He smiled, sauntering up to my window, and I was toast.

Mickey Rhodale hooked his thumbs in his pockets and grinned down at me.

“You didn’t have to pretend to run out of gas just to get me alone, Princess.”

I started to sputter. “I didn’t—you don’t—
argh.
Just give me the gas so I can get out of here.”

He tilted his head, saying nothing, but his smile faded. I couldn’t see his eyes through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, but I couldn’t miss the way his lips tightened.

“How about you get out of the truck and pour your own gas,” he said. “I’m not one of your flunkies.”

“I didn’t mean—I just—”

But he turned and stalked back to his truck, so I jumped out of mine so fast that my book went flying. I bent down to get it and turned to see Mickey openly staring at my butt.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “You have a very nice ass, Princess. Why is that? Personal trainer? Thousand-dollar gym membership?”

“I ride horses,” I snapped. “But thank you for the instant stereotyping.”

He pulled his glasses off and stuffed them in his pocket, and those spectacular blue eyes danced with amusement. Yeah, he was laughing at me. Again. I was a little tired of it, and so I decided to turn the tables on him.

I checked
him
out. Slowly. From head to toe, I took my time staring at every glorious inch of that hard, toned, muscular body.

And it backfired on me—I almost choked when my mouth dried out completely, but no way was I letting him know that.

“On the other hand, you’ve got a nice ass, too,” I said, trying for a slow drawl of my own.

“Oh, I’m nice all over,” he said, and his gaze turned hot. “You have no idea.”

I swallowed, hard, because I kind of
did
have an idea, and I was about an inch away from hyperventilating.

“Well, okay,” I said, clearing my throat. “Now that we’ve established the relative niceness of our respective posteriors, maybe we can get on with the filling of my gas tank.”

He blinked and then started laughing. “Oh, sweetheart. You are adorable.”

Suddenly I’d had it. We kept dancing around this fierce attraction, and I had no idea what to do with it, but this tension was about to make my head explode, right here on the side of the road.

“Look, Mickey, either help me or go away. I’m not your sweetheart, and I’m not adorable. I’m tired and hungry and I’m getting a headache. Are you going to help me or what?”

He stared down at me, his eyes blazing with intent, as if he wanted to back me up against the truck and kiss me right then and there. Or maybe I was just projecting a whole boatload of wishful thinking on the moment because, up close, he was fiercely beautiful. His muscled arms were cut and carved like a sculptor’s dream, and the silky waves of his hair made me want to throw my arms around him and run my fingers through it, over and over. I was caught in a bizarre spell created by pure
want
, and I’d never felt this way before in my life.