As a child he’d heard the story again and again from his Rom uncles and aunts and his Rom grandmother in the cottage Jock bought for her in town.
They glowed with the romance of it all.
Jamey saw only his mother’s sordid marriage to his real father and the ensuing scandal. Besides, he was the one who had to ignore the foul nicknames his non-Rom classmates pinned on him. He didn’t dare fight them. The school was always looking for an excuse to expel him.
Robert, to give him credit, took on his brother’s battles cheerfully. His blond hair and blue eyes invariably exculpated him.
Jamey loved his Romany kin, but there was a period in his life when he had literally sneaked into his grandmother’s back door so no one would see him. He’d been a grown man before he’d learned to take pride in his heritage.
Jamey certainly never felt love as strong as he felt for Jock. Certainly not for Gwyneth, his most suitable wife. He’d assumed he was incapable of a love that deep. For someone whose ancestry was supposed to render him both fiery and passionate, he’d always been quite a cool customer. Until now.
No wonder Robert had seduced Gwyn. Jamey glanced down at his gloved hand. Hamish and Vlado both swore that Robert had engineered Jamey’s so-called accident in hopes of either killing him or so completely incapacitating him that Gwyn would be in complete control of McLachlan Yard and the money from Jock’s estate. Jamey had resisted the notion even after he discovered Robert’s perfidy, but in his heart he knew it was true.
He remembered nothing of the day of his accident. With both Robert and Gwyn dead, he could never hear Robert’s explanation.
In the two years since Robert and Gwyn had died, the years he’d spent trying to trace Roman throughout the British Isles and finally into Germany, he’d had plenty of time to curse the pair of them.
He’d acknowledged his anger, but never his grief—until now. In less than four years he’d lost Jock, his mother, his beloved brother and a wife he’d thought he loved. There’d been no time to grieve for any of them.
Now, sitting on the jump watching Vic, he felt the frozen fingers that had encircled his heart begin to open and thaw even as the outside temperature dropped. He tried to draw back, because pain lurked there, pain he was not ready to face.
He sat still, hummed under his breath, tried to slow his breathing, to concentrate on horse and rider, to ignore the signals his body was sending him.
It was no use.
His heart began to hammer in his chest. For a moment he was certain he was having a heart attack, as the air in his throat began to choke him. He ran his good hand down the back of his head and felt the sweat dripping from his hairline into the neck of his jacket.
He knew the signs. He’d recognized them in Vic and remembered the way he felt the first time he’d faced the big tractor at the yard.
“Can I quit this now?” Vic said. “He’s cool enough to put away.”
Jamey raised his head and saw that she sat astride the stallion only a foot from the jump.
“Jamey?” she said uncertainly. Then, louder, “Jamey!”
She slid off the stallion, shoved him out of the way as though he were a Shetland pony and grabbed Jamey’s shoulders with both hands. He had enough sense left to pull her the rest of the way into his arms. Somewhere in the background he could hear the stallion stomp in annoyance.
She held him tightly, and he held her just as tightly in return.
“Hang on, it’ll pass,” she whispered. “I’m here. Hang on.”
Gradually, it did. His breathing slowed, he could actually feel air going into his lungs, and when he opened his eyes, he saw Roman staring at him from no more than four feet away as though trying to figure out why the two humans were ignoring him. Jamey grinned. A weak grin, but a grin nonetheless. Reluctantly he lessened the pressure of his arms and heard Vic suck in a breath.
“Sorry,” he said, and hoped his voice didn’t feel as shaky as he did. “A ploy to get you back into my arms.”
Her eyes were concerned, but her voice matched his. “You men are all alike. Anything for sex.”
“Absolutely. Let’s get this horse to bed and go to the house ourselves before we freeze to death.”
She nodded. “I’m starved. There’s some kind of casserole in the freezer that I don’t think will give us ptomaine poisoning if we microwave it.”
“Who better to die with than you?” He took the stallion’s reins and walked him into the barn. His legs felt as shaky as though he’d ridden a hundred-mile endurance race. Mentally he tucked his armor back in place behind a cheerful smile. He mustn’t let that happen again.
VIC CHATTERED ON through dinner about the stallion and what a joy to ride he was and how marvelous of Jamey to force her to do it.
He let her talk. He still felt shaky. The only other time he’d felt that way was the first morning after his return from hospital when he’d tried to climb onto the tractor.
Vic put the empty casserole dish into the dishwasher, slammed the door on it and poured Jamey a cup of coffee. “Okay, here.”
He sipped it as she sat down opposite him.
“I’ve waited long enough,” she said. “Talk.”
“About what?”
“About that freakazoid thing down at the ring. What triggered it? Don’t deny it.”
“I can’t tell you what triggered it.” Which was somewhat true. He could tell her, but he had no intention of doing so.
She reached across the table and touched his gloved hand. “This? Because I have two good ones and you don’t?”
“Part of it, I suppose.” He leaned back so that the front feet of the kitchen chair came off the floor and folded his arms across his chest. “I loved my half brother.”
“You’re supposed to.”
“He hated me. And I never knew until the day he tried to toss me headfirst into a hay baler. At least Uncle Hamish says he did.”
“The brother who died?”
“The brother who seduced my wife. When they found out I was probably going to live, he and Gwyneth forged a power of attorney, and while the rest of my family waited in hospital for me to wake up from a coma, the pair of them sold every horse, every piece of tack, equipment, silver and antique they could get their hands on before they drove my Porsche off a mountain in the Alps.” He took a deep breath and dug his fingers into his arms. He would not give way again.
“Oh, Jamey, I’m so sorry.”
“I adored Robert. Everybody did, except Jock, his real father. Oh, Jock loved him of course, but I think Jock was the only one to see Robert clearly. He tried hard to instill honor and morality into Robert—maybe too hard. Worried about him more than any of us knew.
“Robert always believed that the rules didn’t apply to him. Uncle Hamish told me Jock used to say there was something a bit off about Robert—like a rank stallion that can’t ever be trusted. I seemed to be all right, so Jock felt that the bad genetic material must have come from him.” Jamey smiled ruefully. “As a horse breeder, Jock was very big on genetics. He used to say—”
Vic interrupted him. “Breed the best to the best and hope for the best.”
“Yet my real father was a barbarian, while Jock was pretty close to a saint.”
“Jock was apparently right about trusting you.”
“Enough to leave me the yard. He left Robert a decent trust fund, but he made no bones about telling everyone that I was his firstborn son, his heir. In British law, the moment he adopted me, that’s what I was.
“Robert swore he was delighted not to be saddled with the headaches of the place. He was already carving a brilliant career for himself in London in the financial markets. Making much more money than I was likely to see in a lifetime. Of course, neither of us expected Jock to die so suddenly or so young.”
“But Robert wasn’t happy with the arrangement, after all?”
“Robert didn’t ride, didn’t even like horses. They certainly never liked him. He took after my mother, w
ho never rode again after the day Jock threw her up behind him and raced away with her. Robert was good at sports and games and mathematics. Not me. I hated school. I’d rather be out galloping the downs or tickling trout. I was very proud of Robert. He had an easy casual elegance I could never achieve. And he was well over six feet and sandy-haired like Jock, while I...” Jamey shrugged.
“One thing I’ve wanted to ask you. If you were so keen to deny your heritage, I would have thought you’d sport a crew cut and wear ties. And no earring.”
Jamey laughed. “Ah, you noticed, did you? Until I went into hospital, my hair was shorter than Julius Caesar’s and I was the tweediest country gentleman outside of Country Life. By the time I came out of the coma, and during all those operations and physical therapy, my hair was the last thing on my mind. I couldn’t even comb it. I’m—I was—a true right-hander. I had to learn to write left-handed, do everything else left-handed, including shave.”
“The earring?” Vic prompted.
“That’s Uncle Vlado’s fault. And my cousin Tony’s. He’s a vet in Edinburgh. They and Uncle Hamish thought I needed cheering up, so they took me pub-crawling after I got out of hospital. The next morning I woke up on Tony’s couch with a god-awful hangover and a gold stud in my ear. Tony had performed a bit of surgery on me after I passed out. Considering the state he must have been in, it’s a miracle I don’t have a ring in my nose.”
She laughed. “But you kept it?”
“I suppose it feels symbolic. I am no longer the man I was. The country gentleman died in that hay baler. What’s left is a perambulating, motorcycle-riding, middle-aged Gypsy saddle burn who no longer wants the responsibility of being the boss.”
“We both got broken, didn’t we? And I don’t mean our bodies.”
“You’ve had twenty years to deal with yours. I’ve been avoiding mine. Tonight I came face-to-face with the fact that I still love my brother a great deal. That I miss him like crazy and that I’d hand over every dime I ever made to him if he would walk into this kitchen tonight.”
“After what he did to you?”
“Yes.”
“And your wife?”
“Poor Gwyn. After marriage to me, it’s no wonder she fell for Robert. I thought she’d be a perfect wife for me. You know, the county post-deb with blond hair, blue eyes, a good seat on a horse and the proper Anglo-Saxon background. She seemed like that on the surface, but underneath I think she yearned for a wild Gypsy lover. I was really a stuffy Englishman, not at all what she’d bargained for. Robert, on the other hand, was certainly as wild as any woman could wish for.”
“But why try to kill you? Why rob you?”
“Because his flouting of the rules finally caught up to him. I thought he came home to the yard for a visit. Actually he was running away from a series of shady financial transactions for a group that was pressing him to replace the money he’d invested under his own name, instead of theirs. He didn’t have it. He always ran from trouble. Ran to me or Mother. Mother was gone by that time, so he came to me. I didn’t have any money to give him. But if I died, Gwyn inherited everything. So he seduced her and tried to kill me. In Robert’s mind that was the simplest solution to his problems. I’m sure he was terribly surprised when he found himself going over that cliff in France. He never expected to pay for his mistakes.”
“You speak of Jock all the time, but hardly ever of your mother. You didn’t get along with her?”
“She tried, but every time she looked at me she saw my biological father—the man who had abused her. I’m sure she fought her feelings, but Robert was her pet.”
“That didn’t annoy you? It would have annoyed me.”
“But I saw her point, you see? I agreed with her. That why I tried so hard to live up to Jock’s expectations. Everyone else expected me to be irresponsible or dishonest or sly. Never Jock. Or if he did, he never let me know it. My uncle Hamish is the same. He may not have trusted me when I was growing up, but he does now.”
“And what about the yard? Is it still in operation? Did Robert manage to destroy everything?”
Jamey realized with a start that he’d been talking much too freely. He wanted to lay out the rest of the story, but he had to know what kind of success Hamish had in accruing money before he could consider doing that. He had never expected to be questioned in quite this much detail. He knew he’d invited it, but still...
“Uh, we managed to recoup some of the losses. Uncle Hamish and Uncle Vlado are managing fine without me for a year or so.”
“Neither of them has the reputation as a trainer that you do, surely,” Vic said.
“We’re concentrating on sheep and cattle. I had to get away for a while. Didn’t want the responsibility. Can you understand that?”
“Oh, boy, can I! There are days when I think if one more person pulls me in another direction I’m going to scream. When I’d like to walk away and start a new life in a one-bedroom city apartment where nobody knows me. Where I can work at a regular job from nine to five and watch television every night.”
“You’d miss this.”
“I know. That’s why I haven’t done it. Not yet, at any rate. And now that I’m riding again...”
“And when do you make the great announcement?”
Vic jumped as though he’d struck her. “Never! I couldn’t.”
“So you intend to sneak off in the middle of the night to ride horses alone for the rest of your life? Come on, Victoria. Don’t be an ass. I’ve not worked this hard on you for—”
“You? You’ve worked?” She stood and leaned on the table. “Don’t I get any credit?”
He held up his hands. “Whoa! That’s not what I meant.”
“So what did you mean, pray tell?”
“I want to watch Albert and Angie’s faces when they see you out there on that stallion. That’d almost be worth losing this over.” He held up his gloved hand.
Her face softened. She reached across the table and took his gloved hand in both of hers. “And I’d give up riding again in a heartbeat if I could give it back to you.”
Their eyes held. His fingers curled around hers. “Vic...” he whispered.
She broke the spell. “In answer to your question, I’m terrified to tell anyone. I’m afraid I’d blow it at the last minute, and then they’d all be so sorry for me.” Her shoulders hunched. “I’d hate that. Give it a couple of weeks. A month. You did promise to stay two months if we worked out.” She looked up at him. “I’d say we’ve worked out so far.”
More than she could know, he thought. And less.
“And now I’m off to bed.” She stood and crossed to the door. Then she turned, her eyes wide. “Oh, Lord, I totally forgot! Tomorrow is that benighted party of Vach’s. We’ve never had your suit pressed.”
“That Connaway man does not want me at his party, Vic. You go. I’ll baby-sit the horses.”
“No way. If I go, you go. Even Albert and Linette are going, and Albert hates putting on a tie more than any man I know.”
“All right. I’ll drive into town tomorrow morning and have my suit pressed. But trust me, it’s a mistake to drag me along. You’re going to have to field questions about me you do not want to deal with.”
“I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.”
But he did.
CHAPTER TWELVE
VACHEL CONNAWAY LIVED in a sprawling mansion set in a twenty-acre park in one of the oldest sections of Germantown. The house and grounds blazed with light. Uniformed attendants parked cars around the perimeter of the driveway so that the guests could drive right up to the front door.
Good thing, because the skies were spitting sleet After three days of icy temperatures, the ground was cold enough so that any precipitation would probably stick. “I don’t intend to stay long,” Vic said to Jamey in the seat beside her. “I hate driving in this stuff.”
“I’ll drive us home, if you like. I’m used to worse than this at home.”
“You ma
y be used to snow, but nobody can drive on solid ice, and that’s what we tend to get around this time of the year. Just as soon as the forsythia buds. Besides, one of us has to stay sober. Might as well be me. I don’t like liquor all that much, and I’m a terrible drunk. I go to sleep in a corner.”
“A real party animal. Then we’ll both stay sober. One wee dram is all I’ll take. If the whiskey’s good enough, that is.”
“Oh, it’ll be good enough. Vach only has the best.” She took the hand of the young man who opened her door, handed him her keys and said, “Put it where you can get at it. We won’t be staying long.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jamey followed her up the broad stairs. Tonight she wore high-heeled pumps, which meant she topped him by more than an inch. She’d already had her coat on before he came down the stairs, so he had no idea what kind of dress she wore, but her legs in their black tights—no, in America they were called panty hose or something equally silly—were gorgeous.
Although he felt an incredible burst of pride to be her escort, he knew he’d be the subject of curiosity. That was why he dreaded this party. Questions, stares, insinuations. He’d have to be extremely careful to keep his bland conartist’s countenance in place. Charm the ladies, amuse the men. Play the fool if necessary.
“May I take your coat, Mrs. Jamerson?”
A tall gray-haired man in a white uniform jacket slid Vic’s coat off her shoulders.
“Thanks, Patterson,” she said.
She wore a simple straight dress in a fine wool jersey of such a dark red it was almost black. It had a deep V neck that revealed the swell of her lovely bosom and a split up the side that showed a flash of elegant leg when she moved. She wore diamond studs in her ears.
Jamey wore no topcoat. He didn’t have one with him, but his suit was from Saville Row and tailored for him. So was his shirt. His hair was freshly barbered, and he’d tossed his gold stud into his duffel bag for good. He looked like a prosperous English businessman. He intended to cause Vic no embarrassment over his appearance.
Mr. Miracle (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 14
