“I’m glad to hear you say ‘used to.’ “
Gage chuckled, then sighed, and frowned pensively.
“Watch this,” he said, raising his hand to his throat and drawing his neck chain out of his shirt.
As he closed his fingers around the horseshoe nail, Ganymede raised and turned his head toward them, and pitched his ears forward. When Gage let go of the nail, he lowered his head and began to graze again. Gooseflesh sprang up on Eslin’s forearms.
“Happens every time I touch the nail,” Gage told her. “You said it was a link. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” Eslin murmured. “Have you told Doc about it?”
“No, and I’m not going to.” Gage tucked the neck chain back inside his shirt. “Ganymede is the calmest, most even-tempered stallion I’ve ever seen. Anyone can handle him. Nothing upsets him, and I mean nothing.”
“Then why did he attack Marco?”
“Because I touched the nail,” Gage said quietly as he gazed at the grazing horses, and then smiled at Eslin. “At least I think that’s why. What do you think?”
If the nail were a link … if when Gage had touched it, he’d transmitted the rage he’d felt …
“I think,” Eslin said slowly, “that it doesn’t matter anymore. It happened, it’s finished, and I think”—she smiled at him— “that when you’re angry or upset you should keep your hands off the neck chain.”
“I intend to,” he said, smiling as they stepped back inside and he shut the doors.
Not only shut them, but dropped the plank that locked them from the inside. A step or two ahead of him, Eslin glanced at him over her shoulder and flushed.
“It’s the only place I could think of where we wouldn’t be disturbed,” he said.
Once he’d locked the doors on the far end of the corridor, Gage led her into a not-so-empty stall. There was a pallet made of green horse-blankets on the straw, and Eslin laughed, her face crimson, as she turned to face him.
“You planned this!”
“I didn’t plan, I hoped.” He slid his arms around her and drew her against him. “You will marry me, won’t you?”
“If you ask me I will.”
“Will you marry me, Eslin?”
“Yes.” She sighed, nestling her cheek against his chest.
“When?” Gage murmured into her hair.
“June.” Eslin sighed again. “I know it’s old fashioned, but I’d love to be a June bride.”
“You don’t want to make it sooner, love? You’ll be very obviously pregnant by June.”
Startled, Eslin sprang away from him. Gage grinned at her.
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he cut her off confidently.
“I can’t be,” she insisted. “We only made love twice.”
“Once is sometimes all it takes,” Gage murmured, easing her back into his arms.
“I think,” Eslin said, smiling as she wrapped her arms around his waist, “that you’re getting a little carried away with all your practicing.”
“How can you doubt me?” Gage teased, as he lowered her onto the horse blankets. “Didn’t I manage to find you in the mountains and tell you where Ethan and I were?”
“This isn’t quite the same thing.”
“You’re right, it isn’t.” He smiled softly as he laid Eslin on her back and gently eased himself on top of her. “This is our child we’re talking about.”
“If you’re right—and I’m not saying you are,” Eslin hedged, lacing her fingers together behind his neck, “—is it a boy, or a girl?”
“A boy,” he replied emphatically. “He’ll be born on”—he paused, his lips pursing—”October thirtieth.”
“Gage, I’m a woman, not a horse.” Eslin laughed. “If I’m pregnant, the baby will be due around the end of September. And it could be a girl, you know.”
“It’s a boy,” he repeated. “We’ll have a girl, but two boys first. I think we’ll name her Alyse.”
Eslin had always liked the name Alyse, and very suddenly, the image of her own distant future wasn’t shadowy anymore. The faces she’d seen ringed around her were very clear, very handsome. All her children and grandchildren had gray eyes.
“How many children will we have?”
Frowning thoughtfully, Gage raised himself on one elbow.
“Four, I think. Three boys—and Alyse.”
“You sound pretty sure about all this.”
“Of course I’m sure,” Gage grinned. “I’m psychic.”
EPILOGUE
Gage was right about the sex of their first child; it was a boy, but both he and Eslin were wrong about his birthday.
He was born at the Harwood on October eleventh, the same day as Johnny Byrne’s son, at twelve twenty-nine P.M. after a twenty-three-hour labor.
Eslin had natural childbirth and Gage was her coach. Squeezing their Lamaze classes into the busy fall racing schedule was tricky, but it was worth it to both of them when Gage lifted their son, kicking and screaming and still attached to Eslin by his umbilical cord, onto her stomach.
He weighed eight pounds and six ounces, and was twenty-one inches long. By his eighth-week checkup his baby-blue eyes had already begun to turn gray like his father’s.
They named him Gerald Ethan.
Copyright © 1987 by Lynne Smith
Originally published by Dell as The Dreaming Pool by Paula Christopher Electronically published in 2007 by Belgrave House
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
http://www.BelgraveHouse.com
Electronic sales: [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.
Table of Contents
The Dreaming Pool
Lynn Michaels
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
CHAPTER 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
EPILOGUE
Lynn Michaels Page 31
