The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  “Tailhead’s become more prominent, pelvic girdle’s relaxed, so we’re moving right along. Josephine is clean, well-fed and cared for, and I’ve boosted her vaccines myself. She’s healthy, and happy, as far as it goes.” With that, she stroked the mare’s head, gave Bailey a brilliant smile. “She’ll give you a beautiful foal, Sam.”

  “After three hundred and forty days of anxiety on my part, I can tell you that’ll be a pure relief.” The warmth in his tone edged to nerves when the horse moaned. “Is there anything we need to do for her?”

  “Not unless she suffers any complications,” Ava said with another smile. “She’s still in the first stage of labor, but even after that moves to visible contractions and the foal begins the final descent through the birth canal, we’re pretty much here to offer moral support while nature takes its course. In fact, she’ll probably progress more easily the less we try to interfere. No female really likes an audience when she’s laboring.”

  The mare blew through her nose as Ava stepped out of the stall to join the men.

  “I guess this is sort of what it feels like to be an expectant father,” Sam said with a rueful grin. “Excited and helpless and… hell, almost guilty.” At that, Josephine jerked her sweaty head. “I know girl. This is all my fault.”

  “That comment lends itself to some very interesting interpretations,” Jordan remarked dryly.

  Sam’s gaze slid to where Jordan stood, and Ava said “Oh.”

  Realizing she’d all but forgotten him didn’t make Jordan feel any more kindly toward the farmer.

  “Sam, Carl, this is Jordan Wellington. He gave me a ride because my car’s still at the clinic.”

  They exchanged pleasantries, Sam moving away from the stall to shake Jordan’s hand, and more, take his measure. Keeping his eyes on Jordan, he called over his shoulder. “There a problem with your car, Ava?”

  Jordan lifted a brow. If you were familiar with human nature – and Jordan was – there was a whole lot of subtext to that question.

  Ava, caught up in conversation with Carl, didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, uh, flat tire.”

  Sam stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Rocked back on the heels of well-worn cowboy boots.

  Squinted like Dirty Harry.

  “So. You a client of Ava’s?”

  Jordan stuffed his own hands into his pockets. He was enough of an angler himself to recognize a fishing expedition when he saw one.

  And because he’d had a crappy day, and a frustrating, if exciting night, he figured it just might be interesting to tug this guy’s line. “Among other things.”

  Sam glanced back at Ava, then tried to set the hook. “So have you been… using her services long?”

  “A little less than a week, actually.”

  Sam nodded with satisfaction, as if he’d reeled in a keeper. “Not long, then. She’s been treating my horses for the better part of a year.” And it was abundantly clear to Jordan that the man had had his sights set on Ava for the same length of time.

  Jordan eyed Sam levelly. Decided to break the line. “Is that so? Guess us city boys move a little faster.”

  Irritation spiked, but before the other man could offer a retort, the mare let out a soft whinny.

  “You’re doing fine,” Ava soothed when the animal paced past the stall door.

  Both men’s eyes flicked toward the females, then just as quickly snapped back.

  “You look familiar,” Sam said after another moment of blatant scrutiny. “Have you been on TV recently?”

  “Not unless it was As the Courtroom Turns,” Ava called over her shoulder. “Jordan’s an assistant district attorney.”

  “That’s right.” Sam snapped his fingers, memory kicking in. “I saw the press conference you gave a couple of weeks ago about that serial killer. What’s his name?”

  “Elijah Fuller,” Jordan replied, and felt another hook in his mouth that had nothing to do with Ava.

  “Are you prosecuting that case?” Ava’s dark gaze swung back toward Jordan.

  “I’m lead counsel, yes.” It was true, but what he didn’t say was that if it were up to him, there wouldn’t be a case left to try.

  “A terrible thing, that.” Carl leaned against the stall, wizened face set in lines of disgust. “All those innocent women. I sure hope you’re going to send that fella up the river.”

  Uncomfortably aware that all eyes in the barn aside from the horse’s were focused in on him, Jordan firmed his jaw. “I’m going to do my best to see that justice is done.”

  Something about the way her gaze narrowed told Jordan that Ava hadn’t forgotten what he’d said the night before. That despite the best intentions of the law, it didn’t always go hand in hand with justice. But as the mare moaned again, she returned her focus to more immediate concerns. “There’s no need for you to stay any longer, Jordan. Like I said, I’m not sure how long this is going to take. This first stage can last anywhere from two to twenty-four hours. I’m sure Sam or Carl wouldn’t mind giving me a ride home.”

  Over his cold, lifeless body. “I’m sure you’re right,” he agreed. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to stick. It’s not every day you get to witness the miracle of birth.”

  Obviously caught between manners and the desire to boot his competition out the door, Sam chewed the inside of his cheek. “Well.” Graciousness – barely – winning out, he turned over an empty five gallon feed bucket and gestured unhappily toward Jordan. “You might as well have a seat. It’s likely to be a while.”

  It took the better part of two hours. After the sac ruptured, which Jordan couldn’t help but compare to the popping of a truly enormous, but far more disgusting, water balloon, the contractions became visible. You could literally see the animal’s uterus tightening in an effort to push the baby inside of her out. All three men winced when Ava explained that Josephine had entered the active phase of the birth, and they should soon see the presentation of the foal’s feet, easing the way for its head and shoulders to make their passage through the bony pelvis.

  “Thank God I got a Y chromosome,” Carl muttered, and had Jordan suppressing a grin.

  “Shouldn’t she be lying down?” Sam asked after a nerve-wracking ten minutes. He paced, ran his hands through his hair, and then stuffed them into his back pockets. “Everything I read indicates she’s supposed to be lying down.”

  “Most mares do,” Ava agreed, easing closer to the stall to check the mare’s progress. “Some insist on standing. Seems Josephine’s independent-minded, and is going to do this her own way. You’ll need to hold her.” She motioned Sam and Carl forward, and pulled some rubber gloves out of her bag. “So she doesn’t move around. I’m going to catch the foal.”

  Catch the foal, Jordan thought with amazement.

  And then he watched her do just that.

  “Is it stuck?” Sam fretted after the spindly legs emerged and nothing followed for several minutes.

  “It’s okay. It’s great. Josephine’s just taking a minute to rest.”

  Jordan was overwhelmed by the fearless, competent way Ava helped the baby into the world. The blood that came with new life streaked her arms as first a head and finally a small brownish body emerged from its panting mother.

  When the foal slithered free, sloppy and wet, Jordan’s momentary disgust was replaced with sheer wonder. Here was life at its very start. New. Unsullied. Bursting with possibility.

  The baby began to struggle as Ava lowered it gently to the hay. “You’ve got a fine looking colt here, Sam.”

  “Hot damn. It’s a boy. You’ve got a son, Josephine.”

  Sam came around to get a look at the foal, and Ava explained that they needed to wait at least ten minutes before cutting the umbilical cord. Carl held the mare, who was actively trying to turn around and see her newborn, until Ava had made the cut, and dipped the stump in antibiotic.

  “She’s getting fractious,” Carl warned.

  “Mother’s instinct. We s
hould step back, let them get acquainted.”

  “Congratulations,” Jordan said as they filed out, and caught up in the moment, Sam even shook Jordan’s hand.

  “Hell of a thing.” The other man shook his head in wonder. When he looked back toward the stall, Jordan caught the sheen of tears, and resigned himself to tolerating the man. It was pretty hard to drum up an active dislike for someone who cried at his first horse birth.

  Provided, of course, that man kept a safe, professional distance from Ava.

  After the mare had a chance to clean the foal and Ava had dealt with the placenta, she made use of the tack room sink. “He should be trying to stand soon,” she commented to Bailey as she lathered soap up to her elbows. “He doesn’t show signs of it within four hours, you give me another call. But I think you’ve got a strong, healthy mother and foal. Shouldn’t give you any problems.”

  Accepting the towel the man held out, she choked out a laugh as he caught her in a hug.

  “Thank you.” And casting Jordan a glance, he dropped a kiss on her surprised cheek. Were Jordan a betting man, he’d put money on that kiss landing on her lips if Jordan hadn’t been in the room.

  “My pleasure, Sam. Best part of the job.”

  Once they were on the road and she started to come down off of the inevitable high, Jordan could see the exhaustion pressing her into the seat. Tendrils of hair slipped out of the knot in messy, curling ribbons and Jordan could swear he heard her jaw crack from the force of her yawn.

  “Thanks again.” Weariness dragged at the words like tin cans tied behind a car. “You really didn’t have to stay.”

  “It was amazing,” he admitted. And then thought of the blood. The other stuff he didn’t have a name for, and truthfully didn’t care to. “A little gross at times, but amazing nonetheless.”

  “You handled it well.” A thread of amusement tied up most of the cans, and had her words bouncing out like balls. “I was worried it was going to be a high price for you to pay just to assert your jurisdiction.”

  “My jurisdiction?”

  “Uh-huh. You know, the whole marking your territory thing you were doing with Sam.”

  Jordan winced before he could stop himself. “You noticed that, huh?”

  Ava’s chest rumbled with a sleepy chuckle. “As you said earlier tonight, ‘I’m not stupid, nor am I blind.’ I was a little surprised you didn’t come over and pee on me.”

  “I’ve been potty trained since I was three,” Jordan said with a chastised laugh. “And besides, I’m pretty sure Mr. Bailey got the message without my resorting to urination.”

  “I suppose a liberated woman such as myself should take issue with you for that.”

  Ava’s eyelids dropped to half mast, but she managed a mystified smile. “But for reasons that escape me, I thought it was kind of cute.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  When she didn’t immediately answer, Jordan glanced over and realized he’d already lost her. Her lids had completely lowered, lashes smudged like soot against her cheek, the spark of will that turned her eyes from an ordinary brown to something warm and brilliant quietly banked for the night.

  She looked so much smaller, somehow.

  Tenderness welled. And as lights began to wink here and there against the black sky until the outline of the city took shape, Jordan saw his own pattern emerging. While it may not have been what he’d expected – she may not have been what he expected – he had enough of an eye to discern the big picture.

  He was falling in love with her.

  He waited for the rush of nerves, the pure male panic that should come with such a revelation, but wasn’t wholly surprised to find himself steady. Fact was, he was a steady man. A man who knew his mind, knew his heart, and had little difficulty trusting either.

  In that respect, among others, he was very much his father’s son.

  When he pulled up at Ava’s carriage house, he left the car running and simply watched her. Mine, was the singular thought that ran through his brain.

  He’d known it somehow, the minute he’d seen her. Those wide, dark eyes making her look a little bit stunned herself. Like maybe she’d sensed it, instinctively, as he had.

  Though she’d certainly given both of them a hard enough time.

  Remembering the way she’d gone cool, gone professional had a smile tugging at his lips. Her whole attitude had bewitched him. Maybe partly because it presented a challenge, but more so because a woman who looked like she did had more backbone than three fully grown men.

  Ava wasn’t the kind of woman who could be pushed around.

  Maneuvered, he mused. Very, very carefully maneuvered. So he guessed it was a damn good thing that he was like a farm dog, after all.

  And when he put everything in just those terms, realization smacked him in the head.

  “My God.” He gaped at the woman curled against the seat. “No wonder I fell for you so hard. You’re cut from the same cloth as my mother.” And he, being like his father, hadn’t stood a minute’s chance.

  Like the Titanic, he thought. One glancing blow, and down he went.

  Laughing quietly now, Jordan reached out, stroked the bare skin of her arm. “And you, my darling, are now just as sunk as me. You just don’t know it yet.”

  Settled, Jordan turned off the car and fished her house key out the front pocket of her medical bag.

  Time to take his own little iceberg upstairs and tuck her into bed. It was a damn shame that he couldn’t tuck himself in with her, but he knew that what she needed now was sleep. And if he told himself he could spend another night with her cuddled up next to him and do nothing about it, then he was an outright liar.

  She mumbled something that sounded like “goon” when Jordan bundled her against his chest, but otherwise lay like an inanimate lump in his arms.

  After carefully readjusting his hold so that he could unlock the door without dropping her, he nearly tripped over One-Eyed Jack.

  “That wasn’t funny,” he whispered when he could have sworn the cat smirked. “I nearly dropped her on her head. And after I gave you table scraps.”

  Stepping carefully since he didn’t trust the animal not to sabotage him again, he eased into her bedroom.

  The bed was already unmade, so he simply laid her between tangled sheets blooming with yellow poppies. Her feet hung off the side, and he pulled off her boots before going to work on her jeans.

  He’d had her out of them once already that night.

  Knowing what he would find didn’t make the sight of the red silk any easier, and he gritted his teeth to block the memory of how it had felt against his mouth.

  Soft. Hot. Wet.

  “Not helping, dumbass,” he muttered. There was a piece of hay in her hair, so he leaned over to pluck it out.

  Dusty from the barn, her red shirt was also smeared with some kind of nefarious substance. Deciding it best not to consider the source – another of those things he didn’t want to know about – he wrinkled his nose and tugged it up.

  “Ouch. Hey.” He muffled a laugh as she grumbled and punched him. “Take it easy, slugger. It’s just me.”

  “Jordan?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She looked at him from beneath lids that blinked like a motel’s vacancy light. “Tired.”

  “I know.” He pulled the shirt over arms that she held out like a child.

  She rolled onto her side and went back to sleep.

  And Jordan took a moment to marvel. Then going with impulse, ran a hand over her hip. She looked, he thought, like a pin-up girl from the nineteen forties. When women weren’t afraid to have curves.

  Certainly nothing like the current crop of rail-thin celebrities who sniffed at a carrot stick and called it lunch.

  He imagined that occasionally bothered her. Women were forever looking at other women’s thighs, and finding their own to be fat.

  It was a mystery he couldn’t hope to understand.

  With a final squeeze for
that curvy hip, he pulled the sheet up and kissed her goodnight.

  “Sainthood,” he mumbled as he made his way to the kitchen in search of pen and paper. “That level of restraint deserves canonization.”

  After dropping her dirty clothes in the basket on top of the dryer, he scrawled a note reminding her he’d be by in the morning. Propping it on her nightstand, he checked to make sure her alarm was set. Since it was nearly one a.m., it would be going off before she knew it.

  As Jordan pulled away and headed down the street, he noted the dark car parked in front of Lou Ellen’s house. And found himself slowing.

  Deep blue domestic, out of town plates. Florida, judging from the orange depicted between the tag numbers. As Jordan drove away, a piece of memory raised itself like a crumpled red flag, though he was several blocks away before it smoothed out.

  The tag had been secured in position with a shiny gold chain.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “DO you have any idea how many dark blue, midsize domestic sedans are registered in Florida?” Jesse asked as Jordan leaned over his shoulder to get a look at the computer.

  “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “Too many.” Though his brother had narrowed it down, Jordan noted, and had the plate numbers sorted into lists. Even as they spoke the printer spit one into Jesse’s waiting hand. “At least you caught part of the tag this time.”

  “Being conscious tends to help. Here. Drink your coffee.” Jordan exchanged the printout for the large – Jordan refused to call it venti – Caffé Americano he’d brought along to make up for having woken his brother in the middle of the night.