Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  “Care to join me?”

  Looking over his shoulder, Gage saw Gerald Fitzsimmons standing in the doorway tucked into the alcove beneath the stairs. The softly lit paneled room behind him was his father’s study, and the liquor in the squat, square-cut tumbler Fitzsimmons held was his father’s bourbon.

  “How interesting,” he said slowly. “Mother’s given you the key to the liquor cabinet as well as the key to her bedroom door.”

  “I thought that we could discuss this civilly,” Fitzsimmons answered brusquely.

  “We don’t have anything to discuss.” Gage slammed the control box shut and turned toward the pool. “Not only is your daughter a consenting adult, but she has no interest in me whatsoever.”

  “Really, Gage,” Fitzsimmons chided, “I thought you were a better judge of women than that.”

  The chuckle in his voice stopped Gage cold. Ethan had said pretty much the same thing to him once and had ended up with a split lip. He looked back at Fitzsimmons, who smiled and raised the glass in his hand.

  “Can I pour you one?”

  “Make it two fingers,” he answered curtly, and followed him through the doorway.

  The shutters on the casement windows were still open, and as a rumble of thunder rattled the panes, Gage wondered why Josefina hadn’t closed them. While Fitzsimmons took another glass and a crystal decanter from a carved Spanish highboy, Gage settled himself in one of two blood-red leather wing chairs separated from each other by a square mahogany table and situated in front of the hearth the study shared with the sun-room. He hated this room; he hadn’t always, but he did now.

  The old, rich-smelling leather creaked beneath him as a second clap of thunder rolled nearby and wind-driven rain drummed loudly against the house. Firelight gleamed on the wall-long trophy cases, the rain-streaked windows, and across Fitzsimmons’s broad, silver-bearded face as he stretched his thick right arm across the mahogany table and handed Gage a diamond-cut lead crystal tumbler. The dull orange fireglow danced in the facets, on the polished mahogany, and gave the dark-paneled room a hellish atmosphere. As he leaned back between the wings of the chair and Fitzsimmons sat down across the table from him, Gage felt like a condemned soul sitting down to discuss his term in hell with Mephistopheles.

  “I’ve asked your mother to marry me seven times,” Fitzsimmons began, “but each time she’s put me off.”

  “And you haven’t gotten the message?”

  “She didn’t say no. She said not yet.”

  “Don’t tell me.” Gage raised his glass and sipped from it to hide the smile tugging at his mouth. “She’s waiting for the stars to align themselves properly?”

  “No, she’s waiting either for you and Ethan to bury the hatchet or for one of you to marry.” He tipped back his glass, drained it, then leaned it on his knee and eyed Gage soberly. “She’s afraid you two will kill each other if she leaves you alone in this house.”

  Not an unwarranted fear, Gage decided, and wondered why his mother had confided in Fitzsimmons rather than in him or Ethan. Outside, the wind whined around the house and eerie green lightning flickered in the night sky beyond the windows. Because most thoroughbreds hated thunderstorms, Gage did too. He and his grooms had spent many long, stormy nights calming the temperamental studs and wild-eyed colts. If the storm kept up, he could expect a call from the Stables any time now.

  “Why are you so skeptical of Eslin?” Fitzsimmons asked. “Because of your mother’s interest in the occult?”

  “Partially,” Gage said with a shrug, “but mostly because I have a tough time believing in things I can’t see.”

  “What about Blaine Aldridge? Why won’t you talk to him?” Fitzsimmons persisted. “He feels worse than you do, believe it or not.”

  Jesus Christ, had his mother told him everything?

  “I may have a solution to your problem,” Gage said, smiling and deliberately avoiding his question. “Why don’t you just marry Mother and move in here? Or wouldn’t Mimi’s ghost like that?”

  An embarrassed, almost pained, grimace wrinkled Fitzsimmons’s beard. “Who tells you these things?”

  “Ramón.” Gage took another sip, easing the fiery whiskey down his throat. “Mother tells Josefina, Josefina tells her son, and Ramón—who’ll do anything to get into a pair of Roundtree silks—tells me.”

  “Why don’t you stop sniggering at your mother behind her back and start asking yourself why she turned to the occult for comfort in the first place?”

  “You’re the psychiatrist,” Gage shot back, “why don’t you tell me?”

  “I would”—Fitzsimmons leaned forward and slammed his glass down on the table—”if I really thought you gave a damn.”

  “You said you wanted to discuss this civilly,” Gage reminded him, resisting the urge he felt to punch him.

  “I don’t think that’s possible. And let me tell you something else—whether you believe in Eslin’s gift or not, if you hurt her I’ll take you apart joint by joint.”

  “Do I have your word on it?” Gage replied flippantly.

  A menacing glower on his face, Fitzsimmons rose to his feet just as an earsplitting crack shook the house. The lamps flickered, and in that same split second an image flashed through Gage’s mind—of a single finger of lightning snaking toward an acacia tree and the barn next to it—then the lights went out and huge patches of firelight leapt across the suddenly darkened study. A scream from the sun-room spun Fitzsimmons around and jolted Gage out of his chair. His right foot kicked the table leg in front of him and bourbon splashed on his shirtfront. Cursing, he flung his glass away from him and heard it shatter on the tiles as he and Fitzsimmons bumped into each other on their way to the arched door at the far end of the room.

  Just as Gage reached out to grab the knob, the door sprang open from the sun-room and Eslin appeared on the threshold, the reflection of the fire gleaming on her pale, terrified face.

  “Hurry,” she cried, gasping on a sharp intake of breath, “oh, God, hurry—it’s burning!”

  Chapter 7

  Like ice water her words trickled down the back of Gage’s neck. The image of the barn and the lightning bolt flickered through his mind again, and his heart pounded heavily as he stared into Eslin’s brilliant, firelit eyes.

  “What’s burning?”

  “The barn!” Her voice broke on a panicky sob. “Oh, God, hur-ry!”

  He leapt behind her as she ran back through the sun-room and wrenched the sliding glass door open. A gust of fierce, cold wind took his breath away and pelted needles of rain into his face. He turned his head, dragged one sleeve across his eyes to clear them, and caught a blurry glimpse of dark shapes, backlit by the fireplace, huddling over a still form on the tiles. He heard Ethan’s steady voice—”That’s right, dispatcher, Roundtree Stables—” and Fitzsimmons shouting Eslin’s name before he dived out into the storm behind her.

  Hoping to God that Ethan was calling the fire department and that it wasn’t his mother who’d screamed and fainted, Gage ducked his head, threw up one arm to shield his eyes, and ran slipping and sliding across the rain-slickened flagstones after Eslin. Above the shriek of the wind, the whine of the wildly tossing treetops, and the low groan of thunder, he heard a grating, metallic clang. A moment later, in a rolling green sheet of lightning, he saw the gate in the wall blowing open and shut, and Eslin’s small figure running at it, pell mell but surefooted, a good six lengths ahead of him.

  Without a break in her stride she pushed through the gate and cut left around the wall toward the car park. Even though he knew she couldn’t hear him above the howl of the storm, Gage shouted at her to stop and rushed after her. The lawn wasn’t quite as treacherous as the courtyard, and he made better time across the grass. As he neared the garden wall, a gust of wind caught the gate and flung it in his face. It missed his chin but glanced off the side of his jaw with a jolt of pain that snapped his head back.

  Tasting blood in his mouth and cursing the gate, he sho
ved it out of his way, and in another flash of lightning cleared the garden wall and saw Eslin flying down the drive toward the stable road. He shouted her name again, jerked open the Jeep door, and vaulted behind the wheel. By the time he’d started the engine, backed away from the hitching post, and sent the Jeep bucking after her in first gear, she’d rounded the curve in the drive and had started down the road. Gage honked the horn, slammed on the brakes, and bent over the passenger seat to shove the door open. In the glare of the headlights Eslin whirled, her rain-soaked dress plastered to her heaving breast and her hair streaming over her face. She raked it out of her eyes with one hand and grabbed the door handle with the other as the Jeep squealed to a halt beside her.

  The wind fought her for the door as she hauled herself inside, and she tugged mightily to close it while Gage rammed the gearshift into first, hit the clutch, and sent the Jeep rocketing down the hill. A deafening boom of thunder rattled the windshield and a half second later, in an eerie green flash, he saw a thin spiral of smoke wafting above the trees surrounding the two-year-old barn.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned, and floored the accelerator.

  Stabled inside were eighteen colts worth over twenty million dollars. Twelve belonged to Roundtree, six to other farms who’d sent them for training. It could be worse, Gage told himself, lightning could have struck one of the stud or broodmare barns. He tried to keep that thought uppermost in his mind as he steered the Jeep down the twisting road, but it didn’t help much. Had any gone down? How many had injured themselves trying to kick free of their stalls and escape the flames?

  Oh, Christ—fire! The thing horses feared most.

  A yellow-orange glow flickered through the trees lining the road as the Jeep careened on two wheels around the last curve and Gage groaned deep in his throat, flames licked at the eaves of the barn and smoke filtered through the opened, cross-planked doors. Battery lamps and flashlight beams cut through the rain-streaked dark, raking like klieg lights across the figures of grooms rushing into the barn with saddle blankets, jackets, anything they could lay their hands on to throw over the heads of the terrified horses.

  A dull rumble lit the sky as the Jeep skidded to a halt on the muddy edge of the road, and Gage saw what he’d seen in his mind—a single finger of lightning snaking toward the roof. Revulsion and panic clutched his stomach as he pushed his door open and heard the crackling roar of the fire, the shrill, frightened whinnies of the horses, and felt cold rain soak the back of his shirt as he stripped off his blazer and ran for the barn.

  Two colts, their heads thrown high and tossing at the makeshift blindfolds secured by the grooms struggling to hold their leads, broke through the door just as Gage reached it. He backed out of the way, felt someone jerk his blazer out of his hands, and spun on one foot as Eslin, kicking off her high-heeled pumps as she ran, tucked it over her left arm and darted into the burning barn.

  “Stop her!” he shouted, but no one heard him. “Son of a bitch!” he spat, and ripped off his shirt as he ducked his way through the door around a third colt, half rearing and towing his groom beside him.

  Heat engulfed him and gray smoke drifted through the beams of the battery lamps someone had stationed along the loam corridor to light the evacuation. He couldn’t see Eslin anywhere, and cupped his sodden shirt over his mouth and nose as he coughed his way down the length of the barn where the smoke hung thickest. The terrified screams of the horses lurching and rearing in their stalls rang in his ears, and he dodged past two more colts being led by grooms to safety.

  A bay filly, one of Ganymede’s daughters, her eyes white and bulging, slammed into a stall door on Gage’s left. She backed away screaming, and he forgot all about Eslin as the filly went up on her hind legs. At the angle she’d risen, when she came down she’d shatter her cannon bones on the stall door. Lifting the latch, Gage pushed the door aside, jerked his shirt away from his mouth, and threw himself at the filly. Her hooves narrowly missed his shoulder as he slid beneath her and caught her halter in his right hand. He pulled her head down, flung his shirt over her eyes, and clutched the ends together in a fist under her cheek.

  Whinnying with fright, the filly tossed her head and tried to rear a second time, but Gage’s weight held all four of her feet on the matted straw floor. Before she could gather herself to rear again, he tightened his grasp on her leather headstall and pulled her toward the corridor.

  He’d nearly cleared the stall door when a sleek, muscled shoulder bumped him and knocked him into the filly’s lowered muzzle. She whinnied again, twisted, and tossed her head, but Gage clung to her halter and his shirt as he glanced over his shoulder at a white-stockinged chestnut charging toward the door with Eslin on his back, bent over his neck to hold the blazer over the colt’s eyes.

  As well as he rode he doubted he’d have guts enough to hurl himself on the back of a fire-panicked horse. The jolt of surprise Gage felt slackened his grip on the halter, and the filly bolted. She plunged up the corridor behind the chestnut, half dragging and half carrying Gage with her. He hung on as best he could, hoping the weight of his body would slow her down, and then winced as her thrusting left foreleg caught him in the hip. Pain sliced through his body but he knew that if he let go of the filly she’d run until she dropped or slammed into a tree. As she burst through the doors she stumbled, and Gage managed to get to his feet. He dug his heels into the mud, yanked on the halter, and the filly came head around in a dancing circle toward him.

  About twenty yards ahead of him in the blaze of the headlights swooping down the hill, Gage saw Eslin slide off the chestnut colt, straighten the lead she’d fastened to his halter and looped around her hand, and shove it at a groom. As she did, she jerked the blazer free of the colt’s head and ran back toward the barn.

  “Es-lin!” Gage bellowed at her, twisting away from the filly as Eslin ran past him, her face streaked with mud and smoke and her wet hair streaming behind her.

  The filly squealed, broke his hold on the shirt clenched under her cheek, and reared back on her hind legs. Another hand closed on her halter and helped bring her down. In the bright glare of high beams aimed at the barn, Gage glanced gratefully over his shoulder at Malachi Broom, his dirty, whisker-stubbled face gleaming in the garish light.

  “Eight more!” The old man shouted at him above the roar of the flames and the faint wail of a siren.

  Nodding that he’d heard him, Gage closed one fist securely on his shirt and started back into the barn. As he wheeled around, he saw Ethan, Fitzsimmons, and Blaine Aldridge stripping off their jackets as they ran toward him. Behind them his mother hiked up the skirt of her caftan and tore a length of material from the hem as she followed.

  Smoke rolled out of the barn now and the screams of the horses still trapped inside had reached a frenzied, earsplitting pitch. Gage doubted there was time to lead them all out, and as he plunged through the door, he made the decision to open the stalls and let them go. It was risky but it wasn’t certain death. He pulled his shirt away from his mouth to shout the order and saw a gray two-year-old from Acacia Farms thundering up the corridor. He quickly moved out of the way, and as the gray flew past, caught a glimpse of Eslin’s small body hunched over the animal’s neck.

  Almost directly behind the gray colt, in the wake of wet straw and mud kicked up by his hooves, came Ganylad, the bay two-year-old he and Malachi had exercised that morning. Lather streaked his coat, spittle flew from his bared teeth, and his eyes rolled wildly in his head. From the lead snapped to his halter hung fifteen-year-old Ramón, Josefina’s only child, the boy who’d do anything to get into a pair of Roundtree silks. His dark eyes were wide with terror, his olive face pale and pinched.

  “You get the colt!” Ethan shouted at him. “I’ll get the boy!”

  Gage nodded and jumped, waving his arms above his head, in front of Ganylad. Squealing, like a creature gone mad, he slid back on his haunches, arched his neck, and snapped viciously at Gage, who dodged him and kept waving his arms. T
he second time Ganylad’s neck snaked toward him, Ethan leapt and grabbed Ramón. As he pulled the boy free, the colt’s eyes rolled toward him, and with a powerful swing of his head, he sent Ethan and Ramón sprawling.

  The second or two it took Ganylad to heave himself up on his forelegs gave Gage time enough to fasten a death-grip on his halter, shout at Mal—whom he hoped could hear him—and brace himself for the plunge the colt took toward the door. Over his shoulder he saw Ethan pick himself and Ramón up off the floor, then saw nothing but a blinding sheet of rain as Ganylad, screaming and kicking, dragged him out of the barn.

  Icy rivulets ran down Gage’s naked chest, and he gritted his teeth and tightened his slipping hold on the halter. The frightened whinnies of the colts being led away by grooms, the hiss and crackle of the flames, and Malachi’s hoarse cries for someone to lend a hand were overridden suddenly by the much louder wail of a siren. Rotating red lights flashed through the trees screening the curve in the road, an air horn blared. “Oh, Christ, the idiots!” Gage cursed. And Ganylad, with one last berserk bellow and toss of his head, flung Gage away from him.

  “N-o-o-oo!”

  He heard Eslin shriek as he hit the cold muddy ground hard on his shoulder, rolled onto his stomach, and came up running. A sudden, sharp tic in his right side snatched away the cry that started up his throat as he saw her racing after Ganylad. The colt leaned at an all-out gallop into the curve as two wide, solid beams of light swung around it from the opposite direction.

  Stumbling and falling, Gage ran toward the yellow pumper truck swooping through the curve on a collision course with Ganylad. The colt’s dark bay coat gleamed a brief, bloody red in the swiveling emergency lights and the air horn blasted a second time as the truck swerved and Ganylad veered off the road toward the white-railed fence. Every muscle in Gage’s body tensed as he watched the colt’s desperate but vain attempt to gather himself to jump—then a convulsive shudder rocked him on his feet as Ganylad misjudged the height and crashed through the fence, tail over head.