by JoAnn Ross
Hoping, as she so often did, that her absolute love would make up for the sins of her youth, Kate bent down and brushed a soft kiss against his freckled cheek. Then she slipped out of the room and went back downstairs to check on her daughter.
Brigid was, as usual, turned around in the bed, her small bare feet at the headboard, her bright head down at the foot rail. Unlike Jamie, who was quieter and much more deliberate, her daughter seemed unable to remain still even while sleeping.
Kate lifted her gently, turned her around, then drew the covers over her. The waxing moon drifted by the window, bathing the room in a pale white light. Kate’s lips curved as she viewed Brigid’s small pixie face. There was seldom a time when her darling daughter wasn’t smiling. Even in her sleep. Kate still found it difficult to think of Cadel fathering this child, who’d been born sunshine personified.
After kissing her daughter as well, she opened the door to Zoe’s room, just a crack, enough to see that Alec’s daughter was also sound asleep. Everyone was safe. Which, since there had been so many nights over the years when that might not have been the case, Kate viewed as a major life improvement.
Still restless, she threw on a heavy sweater, jeans, wool socks, her barn coat, and boots and went out to the brood barn to check on Nora. When nothing proved amiss, she was headed back to the house when she saw Alec coming out of the barn where Legends Lake was stabled.
“Looks like I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep,” he said by way of greeting.
“It’s an odd night.”
“Edgy.”
Kate looked at him, surprised that a man who claimed to be so resistant to any form of clairvoyance, could have sensed the energy in the moist air. “Aye.” She glanced over at the barn. “How is he?”
“Seems fine. Though this damn cold is working against his metabolism.” He glared up at the sky which, having cleared, was studded with stars that looked like pinpricks on black velvet. The moon lit the landscape with an unearthly glow. “It’s hard enough to keep weight on him. He’s using all his caloric energy to stay warm.”
“Perhaps the weather will warm up.”
Alec toyed with a silky tendril that had escaped her loose braid to curl down her cheek. He was flat-out crazy about her hair. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to boil up some toad tongues and lizard tails, toss in a little moondust, and cast a weather spell for me?”
“Magic is not my gift,” she reminded him. Her eyes twinkled merrily.
Because it had been too long since he’d tasted her, he tugged a bit harder on her hair, coaxing her toward him. “Do you know, that when you laugh, your eyes fill with little gold lights? Like newborn stars gleaming down on a sparkling lake.”
“You’ve obviously got some Irish blood in you, MacKenna. Because that’s definitely the thickest blarney I’ve heard in some time.” Even so, she couldn’t keep from smiling. “Isn’t it a good thing I’m wearing my Wellies.”
He’d prefer to have her wearing nothing but starshine, a smile and her alluring scent. “It’s not blarney.” He moved closer, until their thighs were touching, his black denim to her faded blue.
He slowly lowered his head, giving her time to protest. To back away. Instead, her lips parted, just a whisper, in invitation and acceptance.
His mouth was a breath from hers, when Kate jerked out of his arms. “Oh! I knew it!”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Nora.” She spun around and began to run through the silvered light and shifting shadows toward the brood barn. “It’s her time.”
A flick of a switch flooded the barn in incandescent light as bright as a summer day, revealing the mare lying on the straw in her oversize foaling stall. She was panting heavily, sweat streaming down her swollen sides.
“Poor baby.” Kate dropped to her knees beside her and caressed the swollen stomach that clenched beneath her hands. “I know, it hurts like the devil, doesn’t it?” The horse rolled her eyes, showing white, in apparent agreement. “But I promise, darling, you’ll be just fine.”
“Naturally, she chose the middle of the night to go into labor,” Alec said.
“Aye. Isn’t that always the way? Both my children were born between sunset and sunrise as well.” Her hands continued to soothe the mare through the contraction. “It’s going to take a while.”
“It usually does. Especially with a first one.”
“It feels as if the foal’s upside down,” Kate worried.
“Do you want me to go wake up someone to help? Or will I do? I’ll admit I haven’t taken part in that many births, but so long as you tell me what to do, I promise not to faint.”
Despite her concern, Kate smiled at the idea of this man fainting in any situation. “Some men might be uncomfortable with taking orders from a woman.”
Despite this being the twenty-first century, Alec knew that time moved a lot slower in Ireland. Especially in the rural west. He had not a single doubt that she’d encountered a great deal of masculine prejudice since taking the stud over from her father.
“Some men aren’t real secure in their manliness.”
“But you are.”
“You bet.” He beamed a wicked smile as he leaned over the heaving mare’s back and murmured in her ear. “And once we finish up here, I’m willing to show you exactly how manly I can be.”
“You’d best be watching out what you’re promising, MacKenna,” she said with a light laugh. “Because one of these days I may just take you up on that.”
“Anytime, sugar.” His gaze heated, intimately touching her. “Anywhere.”
As they sat with the horse, able to do little but soothe her with words and hands, and watch as her contractions gradually grew longer and harder, they took the rare opportunity to talk. For the first hour, they stuck to safer topics—the weather, the type of music they preferred. Kate enjoyed Celtic ballads, Alec, American country, both of which, they agreed, they enjoyed because they told stories of ordinary people and everyday lives they could identify with.
Then, as time passed, Alec found himself opening up to her, sharing things he’d always kept locked deep inside him. Some he’d never even told Pete.
Her eyes shone when he told her about how his mother had dumped him at a theater on his birthday and taken off, never to be seen again. She turned pale when he brought up the closet incident again, paler yet when he told her about Fortissimo, but when he held out his arm, showing the small round scars from a lit cigarette the year he’d turned twelve, a sympathetic tear trailed down her cheek.
“Oh that poor, dear lad,” she murmured, touching her lips to the puckered white skin. “Why didn’t he leave?”
Alec thought it interesting that Kate so easily disassociated the child from the man. As he himself had done for so many years. “Because his roots were in that land. Because he loved the farm and the horses and the mountain, and he was damned if he was going to let any damn alcoholic son of a bitch run him off it.”
“But he did leave.”
“It was over when my father murdered that horse in cold blood. I didn’t want any part of him. I changed my name for a while. To John Smith.”
She smiled just a bit at that. “Isn’t that original?”
“Thanks to my father, the MacKenna name was infamous in racing circles. I never would have gotten a job if I’d used my own name. Besides, at that point in my life, I just wanted to blend in.”
“Disappear.”
He was not surprised she understood so quickly. “Yeah.”
She lifted her hand to his face. Bent forward and touched her lips against his.
“It’s glad I am you decided to come back, Alec MacKenna. It’s especially glad I am that you decided to come here to Ireland.”
“That’s where destiny comes in.”
“I wouldn’t be arguing with you about that.”
He half smiled. “I gotta admit, when I first saw Legends Lake at Winnie’s, I sure as hell didn’t think I was looking at desti
ny.”
“Appearances can be deceiving. It’s glad I am that Mrs. Tarlington rang you up.”
“Make that two of us. She really is one terrific woman. And the only person in Lexington who believed in me when everyone else was betting I’d end up no better than my father.
“I was in the clubhouse dining room one day, shortly after first returning home, having lunch with an owner whose horse I was hoping to train.” Alec could still remember it as if it were yesterday. “The place went silent as a tomb when I first walked in and during the entire lunch, I could sense everyone staring at me. Then Patsy Camden, whose father ran Black Oak Farms and most of the county as well, made a point of saying, just loud enough so everyone could hear her, that it was a crying shame, given my talent with horses, that I’d have that wild MacKenna Scot blood running through my veins, so of course no one would ever hire me, since there was no telling what I’d do.”
Alec shrugged, not adding that after that initial statement, she’d lowered her voice to an exaggerated stage whisper and gone on to say, “Why, once I caught him looking at my lips as if he was considering ravaging me.”
What Patsy hadn’t said was that the week earlier, she’d actually come on to him while slumming with her society friends at the Final Stretch bar where he was making some much needed extra bucks working as a bartender and had been miffed—as only a Southern belle can be miffed—when he’d turned her down.
“That’s a horrible thing to say!”
While he liked her being angry on his behalf, Alec shrugged. “My father did the unforgivable; he killed a horse for money. In that part of the country, he probably would have been better thought of if he’d killed another man.”
“Well, it’s still hateful.”
“It’s life.”
“But you forgave him.”
Had he, really? Alec had to think about that for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I did. But only because grudges get too heavy to carry around.” Plus, he’d been working too hard for too many years to save the mountain and reclaim the MacKenna name to have time to dwell on the past.
“Ah, wouldn’t I be knowing something about that,” she murmured.
He heard the sorrow in her voice, saw the shadow in her eyes and was about to delve into their meaning when the mare, which had been standing during Alec’s tale, let loose with a deep groan.
“We’re getting close,” Kate said, as the mare’s water broke, soaking into the straw. “Could you please wake the children for me? I promised them that they could take part in the birthing.”
“Sure.”
As he left the barn and was immediately swallowed up by the dark, Kate heard the distant caw of a crow, felt the flutter of wings nearby, and was rocked by a sudden, almost irresistible urge to go running after him.
21
THE FINAL STAGE of the mare’s labor did not take long. Less than ten minutes after the children arrived in the barn she whinnied loudly, then pushed with an effort that racked her body. Two small feet emerged, confirming Kate’s concern that the foal was upside down.
The mare whinnied again, louder this time, and rolled her eyes all the way back in her head. If it were possible for a horse to look pale, this one did. Remaining true to her placid nature, she managed to stay calm.
“All right. That’s my darling girl.” Kate waited for this latest contraction to subside, then slid her hands into the birth canal.
Alec watched those slender hands which, at first glance, appeared delicate enough to be strumming a gilt faerie harp. They were also gentle enough to soothe the mare’s distress with a healing touch that had him believing in Biddy Early’s gift. But there was steel beneath, strong enough to rein in a runaway colt and to bring new life into the world. For not the first time since arriving at the stud, he considered what a complex woman she was. Every day he was discovering a new intriguing facet of Kate O’Sullivan.
“He’s too big for me to be pulling out by myself,” she said. “I’ll try to turn him a bit. You take hold of his legs and when she pushes, you pull.”
“Got it.”
The mare began to shake violently. Painfully. Alec grasped the two thin legs and working nearly as hard as the mare, grit his teeth and began to pull.
“I have his head.” Kate was panting as if she were the one about to give birth. “If I can just … a wee bit … ah, there we go.”
They were kneeling, side by side in the blood and manure and fluid that could not all be soaked up by the now filthy straw. Alec had the left leg, Kate the right, and they continued to pull and pull and pull until Alec feared they might yank the poor mare inside out.
A dark nose suddenly appeared. Just as suddenly, the mare stopped pushing.
“That’s all right,” Kate gasped, rocking back on her heels. Her hair had come loose and was clinging in thick wet strands to her face. Her bottom lip was bleeding where sometime during the labor she must have put her teeth through it. “We’ll all just take a little breather, shall we, darling girl?”
“She’s not going to die, is she?” Zoe asked, clearly concerned.
“Oh, no. Isn’t she doing just fine. Nora’s a brave girl, she is.”
“If having a baby is that hard, I’m never going to be a mother,” Zoe decided.
“It isn’t easy, that’s true enough. But—” Kate’s gaze was fond as it swept over her son and wee daughter, whose eyes were as wide as saucers. Kate had just begun allowing Brigid to attend the foalings this year, at the same age she herself had been when she’d first watched her father bring a newborn horse into the world. “I’m sure dear Nora would agree that a miracle is worth a bit of trouble.”
As if on cue, the horse grew alert again. Her eyes widened, huge and dark in her long face. She gave one last final push. The foal shot out of the birth canal with a force that had both Kate and Alec falling backward. Nora, exhausted from her efforts, dropped her head to the straw. The foal lay limp and still beside his mother.
“Wow,” Zoe said, as the foal slid into the world. “That’s really awesome.”
“Aye.” Kate thought it said a lot about Alec’s daughter that she saw the gift, rather than the blood and fluid that had accompanied the birth.
“Do we have to get it out of that wrapping?” Zoe asked as they watched the foal struggling inside the wet and gleaming birth sac.
“The baby can do it,” Jamie assured her. “If not, his ma will help. Or my ma.” He smiled up at Kate, looking like a proud father himself. All he needed was a box of cigars to be handing out.
A vision flashed before Kate’s eyes, of her son, no longer a boy, but a man, standing beside the bed of a red-haired young woman whose smile belied the fatigue in her eyes. Kate blinked. The scene shifted, ever so slightly, revealing the two infants she was holding in her arms, one wrapped in pink, the other blue.
Twins. Kate felt the sting of happy tears. She was going to be the grandmother of twins. When she saw Alec looking at her curiously, she managed a watery smile and shook her head, assuring him that she was all right.
“See,” Jamie was telling Zoe, as Kate returned to the present. The foal had, as nature intended, broken free of his birth sac.
“It’s a boy,” Alec announced.
“A beautiful one,” Kate said.
Zoe tilted her head, observing the small wet animal with open skepticism. “He doesn’t look much like a horse.”
His long spindly legs were attached to a painfully thin body. His feet were white and soft, nothing like the strong firm hoofs he’d be needing to run. His ears were flopped back, wet and seemingly useless on a too large head, and his lips and muzzle were covered with what appeared to be curly whiskers.
“He’s just born,” Jamie said, defending the colt. “You probably didn’t look all that beautiful when you first came sliding out of your mother.”
“His mother thinks he’s beautiful,” Kate observed as Nora gamely pushed herself to her feet, breaking the umbilical cord, separating mother from baby for the f
irst time. She went to work cleaning her newborn, nickering encouragingly to the foal, who, after a time, nickered back.
“What’s she doing now?” Zoe asked, as Nora began nudging the baby with her front feet.
“She’s telling him to stand up,” Brigid said, seeming pleased to be able to share her knowledge with the teenager she so obviously looked up to.
“So soon?”
“Horses aren’t like people,” Jamie informed her, as Nora began to kick her offspring. Not hard, but with definite authority. “They get started a lot faster.”
“Are you sure this is all right?” Zoe asked Kate when the mare moved on to nipping at his flanks. “Won’t she hurt him?”
“I think this is probably a case of mother knowing best,” Kate assured the worried teenager. She handed Zoe a towel. “Why don’t you help her a bit by rubbing the baby down.”
Zoe looked over at Alec, who gave her an encouraging thumbs-up. She began gingerly drying the colt’s neck.
“He’s not glass. You won’t be breaking him.” Jamie grabbed a towel from the pile. “Rub him hard, like this.” He vigorously massaged the colt’s head and face.
Zoe followed suit, quickly becoming more self-assured as the foal began to stir, then squirm. He lifted his hind end up in an obvious attempt to stand, but his wobbly legs folded beneath him and he fell back down to the filthy straw.
“Come on, boy,” Alec said encouragingly. “You can do it.”
For the next few minutes, they all offered encouragement to the struggling foal, including Nora, who kept nudging at her baby and nickering her own equine words of encouragement. Finally, as if tiring of being pummeled, he kicked out at the humans who were pestering him so. As he struggled again to stand, succeeding on his fourth try, Kate unconsciously reached over and grasped Alec’s hand.
