Seeing the gesture, understanding it, Cord swore savagely, caught in the aftershocks of hunger and a frustration that went much deeper than lust. He should have known better than to get involved with a woman like Raine. She was wealthy, successful, gently raised, and burned beyond recovery on the subject of certain types of work.
His type of work.
“I’m more than a gun and a beeper,” he said roughly.
“Really? My father isn’t.”
“Bullshit,” Cord snarled. “If you don’t believe me, ask your mother. She sure as hell knows what Blue is.”
“I’m not my mother. I want more from a man than money and position.”
“Blue loves your mother!”
“Perhaps,” Raine said politely.
“You don’t think so?”
Her false calm evaporated. “Depends on what you call love,” she retorted bitterly. “Being left without warning again and again, never being able to count on the man who ‘loves’ you for something so simple as a shoulder to sleep on, never knowing if he’s coming back, never—”
“He always has,” Cord broke in. “Other men might screw around, but Blue never did.”
Her laugh was like broken glass, all cutting edges. “I believe you. Only a wife would put up with a man who is ruled by a beeper. A mistress would tell him to go to hell.”
“Or a daughter?” he asked sardonically.
“Wife, mistress, or daughter, the beeper means the same thing. You’re second place in a two-entry race.”
“That’s not—”
“The hell it isn’t!” she cut in fiercely. “I had all I could take of second-class citizenship as a child. The kind of work my father does is important, addictive, and carnivorous. But then, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I?”
“No.” The line of his mouth was grim as his voice. “The instant my beeper went off yesterday, I knew how you felt about my work. About me. That’s what I meant when I said that you didn’t know what you were doing. I knew you didn’t want me, even though you thought you did.”
She trembled, torn between fiery hunger and the numbing cold of childhood memories. “I wanted you.”
“Not enough to see past the gun and beeper. Not even for one goddamned night. I suppose I should be grateful. Neither one of us is the one-night-stand type. Sure as hell you would have hated me in the morning.” He bent and picked up the purse and sandals she had dropped when he caught her. “Here. Put your shoes on.”
She tried to, but couldn’t. Her fingers were shaking too much. With an impatient sound, he grabbed the sandals and fastened them on her feet. In silence, they walked back to the car. The silence remained unbroken until he pulled up and parked several doors down from her motel room.
“Give me your key.”
She stared at him as though he had lost his mind.
“Don’t worry, Baby Raine. I’m not planning to spend the night between your pristine sheets.”
“I don’t like that name,” she said tightly.
“I know.” His smile was no more than the biting edge of his teeth. He opened her purse and took out the room key. “Stay here.”
After a swift look around, Cord walked to the door of Raine’s motel room. No curtains moved in her room or in the rooms on either side. He tested gently to see that the door was still locked. It was.
Just as he lifted the key with his right hand, he caught movement at the corner of his eye. Even before he spun completely around, his left hand had yanked the gun out of its holster in the small of his back.
He recognized Raine before the muzzle cleared his belt.
With a startled gasp, she retreated two steps before her mind took over. Even though Cord didn’t look very civilized at the moment, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her.
“I told you to stay in the car,” he said curtly. He holstered the weapon with a quick, casual motion.
“I didn’t want to stay. So what?”
“Just this, Baby Raine. There might be a bomb behind this door, waiting for your key to complete the circuit.”
Her hand came up to her mouth in an involuntary gesture of shock. “But then you—you’d be the one to—”
“That’s my job,” he broke in impatiently. “Go back to the car.”
“But—”
“Relax. I’m more worried about someone waiting in your room than having a bomb going off in my face.”
Without another word she spun around and walked back to the car.
Cord opened the motel room and eased inside. He was all but certain that no one could have gotten past the agents who had rented the rooms on either side of Raine. Almost certain, but not quite.
That damned three percent.
Holding his breath, he listened for a minute. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. He flipped on the light, searched the places big enough to hide a person, and found exactly what the odds said he should. Nothing.
He went back to the car and walked Raine to her door. For a moment he stood there, very close to her, watching her with eyes that were as clear and empty as ice.
“You live in a beautiful castle, with a fire burning in every hearth,” he said finally. “I wish to hell there was a place by all that fire for me.”
He gave her a fierce, yearning kiss. Then he turned and went to his car, leaving her standing with his taste on her lips and her nails digging into her own palms.
He didn’t look back.
Chapter 8
Raine pushed a wheelbarrow of feed up the dusty stable row. Southern California’s dry heat sucked up water almost as quickly as it came out of the sprinklers that worked to keep the dust under control. When she reached Dev’s stall, he wasn’t waiting as he usually did, with his neck stretched over the door and a soft nicker quivering through him.
“Good morning, Devlin’s Waterloo,” she said clearly. “I’m early, but not that early. Wakey-wakey, sleepyhead.”
No mahogany head poked over the stall door.
Alarm stabbed through Raine. She abandoned the wheelbarrow and rushed to look into the stall. The stallion was inside, moving easily, totally alert . . . and edgy as hell. He snorted at her as though he didn’t quite recognize his own rider.
“Hey, boy. It’s all right. Nobody here but me.”
The horse eyed her warily.
“What is it, Dev? Is the wind spooking you?”
Usually Dev came right to her and all but shoved her into the wheelbarrow in his eagerness to say hello. But today he was being coy, mincing around his stall and snorting at her as though she had a frog in her pocket and was waiting to spring it on him.
“Easy, boy,” she murmured.
She propped her elbows on the bottom half of the Dutch door and talked softly to the stallion. Behind her a desert wind stirred among the fragile leaves of pepper trees, making lacy shadows shiver and run over the ground. The early morning breeze lifted her unbound hair, blowing it over her face.
Ears pricked, Dev minced forward to investigate the flying strands. Nostrils quivering, breathing deeply and then snorting to clear his senses, the stallion drank in Raine’s scent as though uncertain of who she was.
“What is it, boy?” she asked softly, holding out her hand. “What’s wrong? You aren’t the type for nerves this early in the waiting game.”
With consuming interest, Dev sniffed her outstretched hand, then her arm, then her neck.
“Hey,” she said, backing away from the relentless inspection. “I know I didn’t shower this this morning—I’m mucking out your stall, not going to a cocktail party. I smell a lot worse after a workout and you don’t give me the vacuum treatment.”
Dev snorted a long comment, then resumed snuffling over every inch of Raine. He reserved his most intense interest for her hair, face, neck, and hands.
Baffled, she simply stood quietly and let the stallion get whatever it was out of his system. The last time Dev had showed such a persistent interest in her, she had been wearing a new cologne. But
whatever artificial scent she had on now was left over from last night, and it was the same cologne she had worn for years. Nothing new. Nothing different. Nothing had changed.
Except that last night she had let a man’s hands and mouth move over her as though he owned her.
A flush of embarrassment heated her skin as she realized that Dev was fascinated by her scent because it was different. Cord Elliot lingered on her skin, in her hair, behind her ears, in the hollow of her throat, between her fingers where she had rubbed them through his hair. Invisible traces to her, but not to the stallion’s acute senses.
Cord’s male scent was all over her, blended with her own.
Gritting her teeth, she waited for Dev to get used to the new scent. The horse’s ability to find each place Cord had touched her was unnerving and more than a little embarrassing. She only tolerated the ruthless inspection because it was easier than driving back to the motel and taking a very thorough shower.
After a final long snort, Dev turned away and lipped casually at the straw on the stall floor.
“Finished?” she asked cuttingly. “You’re sure, now? I’d hate to have you mistake me for someone else.”
Except for the flick of a black-tipped ear, Dev ignored her.
She turned back to the wheelbarrow and pried off a few thick flakes of hay. The feed had been shipped in from Virginia so that Dev wouldn’t have his digestive system upset by new food. Later in the morning he would get a special round of corn and oats and vitamins. For now he would get the bulky food.
Tucking the hay under one arm, she went into the stall and closed the lower half of the door behind her. Suddenly there was no room for her to move. It was all taken up by the muscular expanse of Dev’s butt. She slapped a gleaming mahogany haunch.
“Move it, pal, or no breakfast.”
Good-naturedly, the stallion shifted aside while she dumped the hay in the manger. Even before the slab of hay hit the metal trough, Dev’s teeth were tearing apart the inches-thick hunk of fragrant, cured alfalfa.
While the stallion ate, she raked manure and old straw out his stall. There was no lack of stable help to muck out Dev’s quarters, including girls who would have little to fear from his heels. Despite that, Raine preferred to care for her horse herself. Watching how Dev ate, how he moved, even how he breathed, all added up to her own version of a daily checkup of the stallion’s health. If anything was wrong with Dev, no matter how subtle, she would notice.
Humming quietly, she went to work cleaning Dev’s hooves with a blunt steel pick. In order to do the job, she had to hold each hoof braced between her bent legs like a blacksmith. If the stallion hadn’t been cooperative, the job would have been impossible.
But for her, Dev was a gentleman down to his polished black hooves. All she had to do was touch a fetlock and that hoof was presented politely for her inspection.
When each hoof was clean, and she had satisfied herself that each shoe was on securely, she brought in fresh straw for the stall. She made several trips, scattering straw lavishly. Naturally, by the time she came back with a last armful, Dev had produced more for her to clean up.
“Never fails,” she muttered, grabbing the manure rake and taking care of the problem. “Feed one end and the other goes to work.”
Dev stuck his muzzle deeper into the manger and ignored her grumbling.
Still humming softly, letting the stallion know where she was at all times, she reached into the box that held Dev’s personal grooming tools. She went to work on him with a soft oval brush, bringing his already gleaming hide up to a high red gloss.
From the yard came the sound of voices. They were too distant for her to make out individual words, but the subtle shifts of tone told her that Captain Jon was one of the people talking. With half of her attention, she listened as his voice come closer.
“None of the animals I’ve pointed out so far would give your men any problem,” Captain Jon said in his clear tenor. “This next one, however, is different. Devlin’s Waterloo should never be handled by anyone but his owner, Miss Smith. In a pinch, the stallion will tolerate being handled by me, but I’m bloody careful about making sudden moves. Not that the horse is naturally vicious, mind you. Dev was badly abused by a man and has never forgotten it.”
There was silence broken by the subtle whisper of a soft brush over Dev’s softer hide. Finished with breakfast, the horse stood three-legged, his head hanging, his eyes closed, the picture of equine serenity. He groaned his pleasure each time Raine’s careful grooming scratched all the places he couldn’t scratch himself.
“Are you telling me that is the terror of stable twelve?” asked a deep, amused voice from just outside the stall door.
She almost dropped the brush when she recognized Cord’s voice. Ignoring the sudden wild beating of her heart, she finished a long stroke down Dev’s haunch. She hadn’t expected to see Cord again. Ever. She certainly wasn’t prepared for it so soon.
When Cord came and stood close to the stall door, the stallion turned, head up, ears pricked forward. Raine saw the flare of Dev’s nostrils when he scented Cord. As though comparing scents, Dev nosed his rider. Then the horse turned and began a thorough vacuuming of Cord Elliot.
Motionless, Cord watched the stallion’s ears while his black muzzle traveled from the man’s fingertips to his arm and then to his ear. The horse seemed particularly fond of his neck.
“Hello, Devlin’s Waterloo,” he said calmly, unafraid of the huge horse’s attention. “Are you trying to tell me I should have taken a shower before rather than after my rounds of the stable?”
Raine flushed and looked away, hoping no one had noticed. She also prayed that she would be the only one to figure out why Dev was so interested in Cord’s scent. And so unafraid of a man who was a stranger.
“Bloody fascinating,” Captain Jon muttered. Like Cord, he was watching Dev’s ears, the early-warning system of any horse’s temper. The stallion’s ears were up. He was interested but not nervous. “Dev isn’t afraid of you.” He gave Cord an appraising look. “And you aren’t afraid of him.”
“I was raised around horses,” Cord said quietly. Very slowly, watching the stallion’s ears, he lifted his hand.
Dev snorted, then sniffed the man’s fingers with renewed interest.
“I’d scratch your ears for you,” he murmured, “but I don’t think you’re ready for that, are you?”
The horse whuffled a soft answer, blowing warm air over the man’s neck.
“You’re a beauty,” Cord said, his voice velvet and deep, as mesmerizing as a moonlit river flowing through darkness. “You’re big as a mountain, but so well made that you seem more like fifteen than seventeen hands. Healthy, too. Look at those muscles slide when you move. Graceful as a woman and strong as a god. My great-granddaddy would have killed to get his hands on a stud like you. Red hide and black socks, mane and tail like slices of midnight. The devil’s own colors. But you aren’t a devil, are you? You’re an angel dressed to go sightseeing in hell.”
Dev stood and listened, bewitched by a shaman’s voice, forgetting even to sniff the oddly familiar scent of the man who stood so quietly before him.
“Raine,” he said, not shifting the tone of his voice at all, “come over and stand in front of me.”
It took her a moment to realize that the velvet words were directed at her. She moved slowly, pulled by an invisible leash.
Cord neither looked away from Dev nor moved as she came and stood in front of the stall door, facing him. His voice never paused, words and nonsense syllables blending into a soothing river that lapped dreamily at consciousness, draining tension into a boneless contentment.
“Turn around and face Dev,” he said.
Again, it took Raine a moment to respond to the warm velvet voice. Slowly she turned and faced her horse.
“Don’t be startled,” he murmured. “I’m going to put my arm next to yours.”
Cord followed his words with action, slowly bringing his ar
m forward until it lay along hers. His voice continued all the time, sound flowing soothingly.
“Raise your hand and pet Dev,” he murmured. “Slowly, love . . . slowly . . . that’s it . . . perfect . . .”
She obeyed, almost as mesmerized as her horse by the spoken music of a shaman’s voice. As she moved, so did Cord, their arms lifting as one.
Dev didn’t flinch when her hand, with the man’s covering it, scratched the sensitive areas behind the stallion’s ears. Cord continued speaking, a murmurous, hypnotic flow of sound, a voice that was also a soothing lullaby.
“Slowly, gently, ease your hand down to your side,” he said.
Moving with a dreamlike lack of urgency, Raine’s hand retreated to her side.
Dev didn’t seem to notice the instant when his rider’s familiar hand was gone and he was standing as placid as a cow while a strange man scratched itchy places with unerring skill.
“Move away from me in slow motion,” Cord murmured, “along the stall door. Very, very slowly. That’s the way. Good.”
She obeyed, fascinated by what was happening.
It took a few moments for Dev to realize that his mistress was gone and in her place was a man who was neither wholly familiar nor wholly strange. By the time Dev was aware of what had happened, it was too late for panic or anger. The contact had been made.
Dev’s ears wavered, then settled at a relaxed half-mast position. Sighing, the stallion nudged Cord’s skilled fingers, not only accepting his touch but asking for more.
For a time he stroked and praised Dev lavishly, using his voice and touch to reward the stallion’s acceptance. When he removed his hand and stopped talking, Dev looked vaguely surprised. He snorted once, resoundingly, gave Cord a bemused look, and turned his attention back to Raine.
“Bloody incredible,” Captain Jon said, looking from Dev to Cord. “I don’t care what your job is, Elliot. If you aren’t training horses, you’re wasting yourself.”
“I had an edge,” he said in his usual voice. Smiling thinly, he looked directly at Raine.
Remember Summer Page 11
