The cold was so great.
The fire was so fragile.
And it was so unfair to ask a man like Cord to live out there alone until he froze, never having known warmth.
The radiophone squealed chillingly, an electronic scream in the deep three A.M. silence. Even as Raine sat upright, heart pounding, Cord shot out of bed. In two strides he was on the phone. Soft static and harsh words filled the room.
“Bomb threat at the stables. Smoke spotted. They’re moving horses now.”
She leaped for her clothes before the last word faded into Cord’s vicious curse. He turned, reaching for his jeans, and saw her dressing hurriedly.
“Stay here,” he snapped. “Thorne will guard you.”
She ignored him and grabbed the first shirt she could find. His. She threw it toward him and found her own.
He let the shirt sail right past him. His fingers locked around her wrist. “You’re staying here.”
She spun to face him. “No,” she said curtly, buttoning her blouse one-handed. “With all the commotion, Dev will be an inch away from going ballistic. If anyone but me tries to lead him out of his stall, there will be bloody hell to pay.”
Cord didn’t like it, but he knew it was true. He dropped her wrist. Ignoring his shirt, he scooped up his holster, pulled out the gun, checked its load with a few practiced motions, and secured the gun in the holster. He clipped it to his belt at the small of his back. The whole process took no more than five seconds.
He was reaching for his boots in the darkness when a stallion’s savage scream ripped through the night.
“Dev,” Raine cried, leaping for the door.
As fast as she moved, Cord was faster. He grabbed her and held her struggling against his hip while he searched the television screens that showed the area around the trailer. Some of the cameras on the trailer were immune to darkness. They showed nothing but shadow and the heat signature of distant streetlights. No radiation from a warm body as big as a man.
Fingers locked around Raine’s upper arm, Cord headed for the outside door. Standing to the side, forcing her to do so as well, he opened the door. With a single sweeping glance, he checked the moonlight, shadows, and occasional pools of yellow lamplight for anything that shouldn’t be there. All he saw was Thorne running toward him. No one else moved or crouched in ambush.
“Let’s go,” Cord said curtly.
He leaped to the ground and landed running. She was a half step behind him.
Dev screamed again, shrill and wild, a sound of feral rage.
Driven by adrenaline and fear, Raine ran flat out, her bare feet pale blurs against the darker ground. She had to get to Dev before he went crazy with a horse’s instinctive fear of fire. If he couldn’t be kept calm, he might injure himself.
Or kill someone. It was there in his scream, fear and fury united in a mindless savagery.
Praying silently, she ran as fast as she could. She wasn’t even aware of Cord running beside her, his eyes as feral as the stallion’s cry. She ran without feeling the hard ground or the stones that bruised her feet. She ran without hearing herself call Dev’s name with each breath in a litany of hope and fear.
Smoke darkened lamplight into Halloween orange. Other horses were neighing now, frightened by the scent of smoke. Instincts at red alert, they kicked against their stalls and whinnied constantly, wanting to flee their oldest enemy—fire.
Raine sprinted heedlessly through the night, dodging the men and horses that were streaming out of the stable rows. All around her, men cursed and horses shied violently, their eyes rolling white, sensitive as horses always are to equine and human emotion. Especially fear.
Dev’s scream was a black wildfire raging through the stables, igniting panic despite everyone’s efforts to stay calm. It was important to move swiftly but without fright, to speak softly to the nervous animals as they were led out of familiar stalls into the unfamiliar, threatening darkness.
Thick, oily smoke billowed blackly toward the moon. As Cord and Raine hurtled around the corner leading to Dev’s stable row, the stallion’s chilling scream sounded again. Captain Jon’s slight figure darted through smoke to open Dev’s stall door.
The stallion reared and plunged violently, lashing out with deadly front feet. His mouth was wide open, screaming rage, and his ears lay flat on his skull. Captain Jon managed to hold onto the lead rope for one lunge, two; then the rope whipped through his gloved hands and Dev exploded out of the smoky stall like a devil coming out of hell.
Blind with rage and fear, wholly out of control, the stallion thundered straight for Raine and Cord.
Chapter 16
Raine’s first thought was to grab a double handful of mane and swing up on the stallion’s back as he raced by. She discarded the idea as fast as it came. Dev was already in full stride. He would yank her arms right out of their sockets if she tried to mount him from a standing start.
Her only hope was the wildly whipping lead rope. If she could grab it and hang on long enough to slow Dev, she could mount and prevent him from injuring himself or someone else in his panicked flight. Smoothly she pivoted, preparing to run alongside Dev as she held onto the lead rope.
Cord saw it all as though in slow motion. Smoke. Captain Jon. Lead rope. Blood-bay stallion rearing. Dev raging free into the night with the white rope snapping alongside, ready to tangle in the stallion’s pounding feet and bring him down in a pile of mangled legs and agony. Raine nearby, reaching out, ready to grab the deadly rope when Dev hurtled by. Thorne running up behind them.
Cord’s hands flashed out. Before Raine knew what had happened, she was thrown into Thorne’s arms.
“Get her out of here,” Cord said flatly.
In a heartbeat she turned into a raging, clawing fury that Thorne simply, efficiently overwhelmed. When she knew she couldn’t get away, she stopped struggling and watched her stallion, closer with every long stride he took.
“Dev!” she cried futilely.
“Easy, ma’am. Mr. Elliot will take care of that damned red devil.”
And if he didn’t, Thorne would. He yanked his gun out of his holster and waited.
Cord didn’t even glance away from the stallion charging toward him. He had no doubt about the outcome of any physical contest between Thorne and a woman who knew nothing about unarmed combat.
He also had no doubt that Thorne had drawn his gun. If Cord was lucky and strong enough, the gun wouldn’t have to be fired. If he wasn’t . . .
It was Cord’s predatory stillness that warned Raine of what he was going to do. A terrible new fear exploded in her, crowding out the old. “Cord, no! Dev will kill you!”
He never looked away from the shadow barreling toward him. Adrenaline flooded him, wiping out everything but the stallion racing out of the darkness straight at him. As always in combat, time slowed for Cord until each heartbeat seemed to take a minute. Ice-pale eyes measured distance and velocity.
Dev was in full flight, steel-shod hooves pounding out a drumroll of fear, muscles bunching and sliding, ears flattened.
Thirty feet away. Twenty.
Ten.
Muscles flexed, body poised, Cord waited.
Five.
Now.
His fingers sank into the long mane. He sprang off the ground like a cougar just before the stallion’s momentum would have ripped his hands from the flying mane. A rider’s powerful legs clamped around Dev’s barrel. Cord crouched low over the stallion’s neck, fishing for the lead rope that whipped dangerously around the horse’s feet.
The stallion ran like unleashed hell, too caught up in fear and sudden freedom to register the presence of an unfamiliar weight on his back. Cord grabbed the lead rope and settled deeply into the stallion’s stride, letting reflexes ingrained by years on horseback take over.
Automatically he coiled the long rope to keep it away from Dev’s legs. Then Cord tightened his legs around the horse’s muscular barrel and began pulling on the rope. The special halt
er closed over Dev’s flaring nostrils, cutting down the flow of air.
Unable to get enough oxygen to meet the demands of a headlong gallop, the stallion was forced to slow down. He fought it. His neck arched in a rigid bow. His hindquarters stiffened with resentment. His gallop became choppy, brutally hard on his rider.
Cord kept pulling on the lead rope. As he did, he wondered what would happen when Dev calmed down enough to figure out that it wasn’t Raine on his back.
He found out a few seconds later. The stallion screamed once, raw fear and fury, and then he came apart. His black nose plunged down between his front legs. He bucked and twisted and swapped ends, trying with all his huge strength to shake off the hated weight of a man.
Cord’s legs locked down like thick steel bands. He hauled back on the lead rope, trying to bring Dev’s head up so that the stallion couldn’t put his full strength into bucking. Dev didn’t seem to notice. He just kept trying to turn inside out.
Raine and Thorne came running around the stable row and stopped as though they had slammed into a wall. Both of them realized the same thing at the same time: there was nothing they could do but stay out of the way.
Shirtless, barefoot, Cord rode the screaming blood-bay whirlwind. The man’s muscles bunched and shifted and gleamed in the bright moonlight. So did the stallion’s. They were two powerful, supremely conditioned males fighting for dominance.
For the space of several breaths Raine stood motionless, barely breathing, riveted by the primitive battle in front of her. Finally she took a deep gulping breath and prayed that somehow, some way, neither man nor horse would be hurt.
Inch by straining inch Cord dragged up the stallion’s head. His arms knotted with the effort of the fight, but his body remained supple. A nearly still center in the raging equine storm, he balanced against of the stallion’s wrenching, twisting bucks with deceptive ease. And slowly, relentlessly, he forced Dev’s head up. The stallion’s neck became an arch of arrogant rebellion that made each muscle and vein stand out. The horse lashed out futilely with his heels, shredding shadows and moonlight, screaming in frustration.
Elbows tight against his sides, Cord held the lead rope in both hands and pulled until Dev’s nose was nearly at his boot. All the stallion could do to vent his fury was to spin in tight little circles.
Then Cord began to talk to Dev, his shaman’s voice filling the darkness, a murmurous warm river of sound curling around the horse, washing away fear. Gradually Dev’s circles became fewer and less frantic, his body less bunched with fear, his ears less flat against his skull.
Finally the stallion stopped, stood, and snorted. His blood-red hide rippled uneasily. He made a last stiff-legged circle before he paused and sniffed his rider’s leg. Nostrils flared as widely as the special halter allowed, Dev drank Cord’s scent.
He murmured and stroked the stallion’s neck with a gentle hand. “That’s it. Go ahead and smell me. You know me, Dev. I’ve been grooming you for five days, and for five nights your mistress has slept in my arms. I smell like Raine and like me and a little like you after that wild ride you put me through. See? I smell just like the three of us. Nothing to be afraid of, you blood-bay idiot. Just me.”
The voice continued, dark velvet reassurance, words and nonsense, praising and petting. Slowly, slowly, Cord eased the pressure on the lead rope, giving Dev back his freedom an inch at a time.
The stallion pranced and snorted, his ears swiveling every which way in their own nervous release. The man’s arms gave a few more inches, allowing Dev to release the tension of a neck bowed too tightly. The horse stretched gratefully.
After a few moments a black muzzle came back to sniff Cord’s foot tentatively. Nostrils flared widely, fluttered, and blew out a warm stream of air, only to flare again, drinking the mixed scent of Cord and Raine and dust from the stable yard.
The shaman’s voice continued to cast its spell, winding around Dev like a gossamer net, holding him in thrall. The stallion snorted hugely and moved jerkily. He was uneasy with his strange burden, but no longer wild with fear and rage. There was a man on his back, yet no whips or spurs or savage bits cut into tender flesh. There was only a hand stroking his neck and a shaman’s voice flowing caressingly around him.
When Cord gathered the lead rope and turned Dev toward Raine, the stallion’s ears came up. As though walking on eggs, he minced diagonally toward her, dancing through moonlight to the rippling music of a shaman’s voice.
She walked forward a few steps, then stood motionless, entranced by the sight of a shaman riding bareback on a dancing stallion. Moments later Dev’s black velvet muzzle searched lightly over her face, drinking her scent. Automatically her hand came up in a familiar caress, rubbing Dev’s ears.
But her eyes were only for the man who rode her dangerous stallion. She touched Cord’s leg as though she couldn’t quite believe he was real.
Only then did she admit to herself how terrified she had been that her lover would be killed by Dev’s unruly rage. With a shuddering sigh she put her cheek against Cord’s thigh. Dev lipped at Raine’s hair and minced sideways, trying to see her.
Cord’s hand tightened on the rope, stilling the horse’s restive movements.
“Come up here with me,” he said. His voice was still low and reassuring, still velvet magic. He held out his left hand and locked his left foot into a rigid platform for her to use to mount. “When you’re barefoot around this blood-bay lummox, the best place for your toes to be is out of reach.”
Raine took Cord’s hand and used his foot like a stirrup. He swung her easily into place behind him. Dev pranced a little at the strange weight, but settled down quickly when he smelled Raine’s familiar scent and heard her voice floating down from his back. He snorted, flicked his ears, and danced in place, waiting for a command from his riders.
With a rush of emotion that was too complex to sort out, Raine put her arms around Cord’s waist and pressed her lips against his naked back. Even sitting behind him, holding him, she couldn’t believe that Cord had ridden Dev, was riding him now. And both man and horse were alive, unhurt, radiating the heat of their brief battle into her.
Startled by the sound of the walkie-talkie that Thorne carried, Dev shied suddenly. Both she and Cord kept their seat as though they were a part of the stallion. A brief mutter of voices came from the walkie-talkie.
Thorne listened, then called out to Cord in a calm, low voice. “It was a smoke bomb. Some bastard’s idea of a giggle. He’s probably out there somewhere, busting a gut laughing.”
The steel buried in Thorne’s voice told anyone who was listening that he would enjoy getting his hands on the man who had set off the smoke bomb, then called in a bomb threat just to watch the fun that followed.
“We’ll keep Dev out here until all the stables are checked and everyone is out of the yard,” Cord said. “I don’t want anything to spook him again.”
“Did you see Captain Jon?” Raine asked. “Is he all right?”
“My hands are sore,” Captain Jon said, walking up behind Thorne, “but otherwise I’m intact.”
“You should have waited for me,” she said bluntly. “Dev could have killed you.”
“I didn’t know if Cord would let you come to the stable.” Captain Jon’s voice was matter-of-fact. “It would be a fine snare, you running in all upset and all of us dashing around turning loose horses. Then the smoke started. I assumed that fire wasn’t far behind. I decided it was better to try to lead Dev out than to leave him in his stall to roast like a Christmas goose.”
Raine didn’t say a word. She was still absorbing the fact that Captain Jon knew she was a target and Cord was her keeper. She started to ask how long the captain had known. Before she could frame the question, he was talking again, walking toward them slowly.
“Bloody amazing,” Captain Jon said, looking at Cord sitting easily on Dev’s back. “Bloody, bloody amazing.”
Dev shied and turned effortlessly, making sure that he a
lways faced the captain. The stallion’s riders stuck with him like his own red hide.
“I used to ride a lot,” Cord offered dryly.
Captain Jon said something beneath his breath.
“Bloody rodeo king” was all that Raine caught. She laughed softly, remembering what Cord had told her about his childhood.
“I shipped out before I won the silver buckle for bareback bronc riding,” he admitted, smiling slightly. “The old reflexes are still there, but I’m going to be stiff and whining like a pup tomorrow.”
Captain Jon laughed shortly, shook his head, and strode back to the stables. He would be lucky to sleep again tonight. There were too many things to check before the equestrian team went into the dressage ring tomorrow.
Wind breathed softly over the stables. The last of the smoke thinned and lifted into the starry sky. With a long sigh, Raine stirred enough to loosen her arms from their tight grip around Cord’s body. But she didn’t let go of him. She couldn’t. She kept thinking about what would have happened if he hadn’t been strong enough, skilled enough, and patient enough to ride out her horse’s panic.
“We should walk Dev to make sure he doesn’t stiffen up,” she said. “He has to be supple for the dressage test tomorrow.”
Her voice broke as the realization hit her. The culmination of a lifetime effort was thundering toward her like a runaway horse.
Within twelve hours, she would be riding in the Olympics.
Unconsciously her arms tightened around Cord. Tension swept over her like another kind of night. She didn’t know if she was ready, if she was good enough, if—
Dev shied at nothing, distracting her.
“Think about something besides tomorrow,” Cord murmured to Raine. “Dev reads you real well.”
Her curt laugh said a lot about the tension coiling inside her. She pressed her cheek against Cord’s naked back and tried to think about something else besides the Olympics. Anything else. The moment that Cord would slide into bed, into her arms, into her, seemed like a good start.
Remember Summer Page 22
