by Fiona Walker
He held her gaze steadily. ‘His brain’s fried.’
The returning smile was defiant. ‘You’re the one who always says no horse is born bad.’
‘Some are born cowards.’ He knew it wasn’t strictly true of Beck, but it was simpler put like that.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were the one who could be accused of cowardice.’
Maybe she was right, thought Luca, the prince’s call still fresh in his head. Do as Mishaal asks. A remote, bodyguarded figure who Luca occasionally glimpsed in newspapers or racing pages, the scarred playboy prince had a reputation for cruelty, but he’d never pursued his threat. It was his father who had asked him to contact Luca. He’d talked of endurance racing and birds of prey, not old scores. The Horsemaker might be tracked by the prince’s team like a tagged child, but Beck wasn’t.
It was still possible they didn’t know the stallion was here. Their world of skyscrapers, sand and turf was a far cry from muddy event riders in lorry parks; Ronnie’s drumming up interest by word of mouth alone would never reach them, the stud’s digital footprint still lighter than a hummingbird’s. If he couldn’t get Becks to safety, he had no choice but to stay and protect him. They’d both made the same enemy six years ago.
Every instinct in Luca wanted to help this horse. He looked at him again, unable forget that riding him had been amongst the most exhilarating experiences of his life. Luca knew the principle of deserving a second chance as well as any man. This was his own second chance too. That unspoilt, darkly dappled youngster that Luca could have ridden into battle, jumping cirrus in the sky all the way, might be a ghost of what he had been, but Beck was still the horse that had haunted his waking thoughts and deepest dreams more than any other.
‘Let’s try it,’ he said quickly, before he could think on it too much, the plan forming as fast as he could say it. ‘On one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘Stand him here just one season then sell him back to Fuchs.’ He held up his hand when Ronnie started to protest. ‘Visiting mares by invitation only, a restricted number.’
‘Why limit my profit?’
‘It’s more lucrative. Next year you can cherry-pick his first generation to retain as your foundation line. That’s your long-term investment while your quick profit comes from selling him afterwards.’
Ronnie look at him shrewdly. ‘For a gifted man who doesn’t say a lot, you make sense when the gift of the gab takes you. Keep talking.’
‘With his bloodline and progeny, we both know you can persuade Paul to pay big money for him, especially once we get him looking as good as he did in that video.’ He nodded at Beck who was steaming with sweat, eyes wild, unclipped coat filthy, churning a groove in the sand as deep as a mill furrow.
‘What are you thinking? Half a million?’
It took him a moment to realise she wasn’t joking.
‘You’re the boss.’
‘Don’t forget it.’ The infectious laugh came deep from her throat, eyes Lapis. ‘Half a mill would leave me plenty of loose change to bring back a smart young stallion or two to stand here next year, keep us ticking over while we wait it out for Beck’s babies to be old enough to breed from. You’re quite brilliant, Luca. I love a plan. We sell the golden goose, but only after we keep lots of golden goose eggs to hatch.’
In the round pen, Beck was still running for his life. He’d run until he dropped if he had to. He would never surrender. He was that sort of horse. Does he know he’s in danger too? Luca wondered.
‘Of course, all this depends on whether we can turn him round or not.’ Ronnie grimaced, crossing her arms and adopting her power pose, which Luca was finding increasingly beguiling. ‘We’ll set a deadline. I can’t afford to be a sanctuary, and I need you breaking and schooling on youngsters and overseeing Cruisoe servicing his mares. If Beck doesn’t buck up his ideas in time, I’ll cut my losses and offer him straight to Paul.’
Luca ran his tongue across his teeth. If ever he had an incentive to fail, that was it. But this was Beck he reminded himself. This was Ronnie.
‘Now catch my horse,’ she ordered brusquely, tilting her head, wise blue eyes gleaming.
Beck, who had slithered to a halt to watch them, shot off across the pen when Luca let himself in. He walked a few steps towards him and the stallion reared up, a white tower looming overhead, threatening to strike out.
With a soft burr of the tongue, Luca raised his arms and the horse dropped back down. He swung the head collar, calling for him to get going and Beck tossed his head furiously and charged off in a breakneck circle.
‘He can do that all day,’ Ronnie said, watching from the other side of the metal gate. ‘Lester gets terribly dizzy. He thinks we’re feeding him too much.’
Luca moved further into the circle and the stallion flew between them faster than a roulette ball spinning on its wheel. ‘He’s completely lost trust.’
Quietly clicking and whistling to attract Beck’s attention, he turned to look at Ronnie through the metalwork, ignoring the horse when he spun round and started to career in the opposite direction.
‘He needs a good role model,’ he told her, clicking quietly again. ‘Here, lad, tsh tsh. Let’s give your old Irish stallion a new next-door neighbour to talk to.’ He whistled once more. ‘We’ll move him into the stable beside Cruisoe.’
‘Are you mad?’ Ronnie was indignant. ‘Beck attacks other horses. Put him next to another stallion and he jumps out even with the grille. I’ve seen him barrel it clean off the door at the last yard.’
‘Isolating stallions is the worst thing you can do to them. Now you and I need to be quiet,’ he hushed her as the grey went down through the gears to a floaty trot before stopping dead with a hydra shake of his head.
He was staring at Luca, snorting suspiciously, ready to go up again, brutality on a hair trigger. The once-familiar bond between them was a spectre, shape-shifting and indistinct.
Luca waited, his own eyes staying on Ronnie.
The horse stamped an indignant foot.
Still he waited.
Beck bellowed.
Luca gave Ronnie the ghost of a wink.
Slowly, suspiciously, serpent head tossing, Beck moved closer. They’d done this before, he and Luca.
He waited until he could feel his breath on his shoulder. Only then did he use his voice again, low and soothing, reassuring him that he was in a safe place, that Luca had his back now, that he wouldn’t let him out of his sight again.
He then turned and swiftly clipped on the head collar.
As Beck dropped his head in surprise, Luca sent a silent apology, knowing he’d just taken a circus trick shortcut. To regain a horse’s trust took infinitely longer, but it was the quick fixes that pleased the crowds. And he wanted to please.
‘I always forget how easy you make it look.’ She was thrilled, holding the gate open for them, beaming as they passed. ‘I could watch you all day.’
He turned, remembering how gratifying her blue-sky enthusiasm was, the intimacy with which she praised. Touché, Mrs Ledwell.
Growing up, Luca’s school friends had resentfully ribbed him about the fact that working with difficult horses attracted some girls faster than any number of hours of bench-pressing, a fireman’s uniform and a bottle of baby oil. His four brothers all took regular advantage of this, especially showjumper Donal who was knee-high to a stable door with a face like a fruit bat, yet always had girlfriends who looked like models. Their father, a bandy-legged, balder fruit bat, had used his horse skills to woo their beautiful mother. In Germany, whenever Ronnie had visited Gestüt Fuchs, Luca had often outridden everyone else entirely for her benefit.
‘Let’s get this house move underway!’ She overtook them as they walked back to the yard, hurrying ahead to start making up a bed in the stable beside Cruisoe.
Ignoring Beck performing a snorting sideways dance beside him, Luca yawned as he admired her perfect apple-shaped backside. Still up
there in his top three. She’d always been far too classy for a rogue like Henk, who everyone knew was a deviant. He doubted Blair Robertson was much better.
Taking advantage of his distraction, the stallion caught him a nip on the arm, so staple-gun sharp that he couldn’t breathe for a moment.
‘You’re right,’ he agreed under his breath, shaking the rope in reproof. ‘Work comes first.’
There was no hot water washdown, he discovered, resorting to an old-fashioned sponge before putting Beck back in his old stable, rugged up to dry off while he helped Ronnie haul straw bales into the horse’s new quarters to break up and bank up, listening as she recounted the stallion’s unruliness. ‘He jumped straight out of one of the stallion paddocks and took off across the village just before Christmas. Climbed on a mare out hacking. It was awful. Lucky not to get sued.’
Learning that Beck was only ever turned out in solitary confinement, usually in early mornings before the mares went out – the opposite end of the day to Cruisoe who watched the sun go down – Luca insisted both stallions needed their own fields all day.
Ronnie shook her head vehemently. ‘They’ll kill each other.’
‘If there’s lots to eat, plus plenty of thorn hedge and electric wire between them, they’ll be fine. And Beck needs a companion. Something small and fearless. He’s scared of his own shadow.’
‘A sacrificial goat?’
‘A pony would be better.’
‘“Companions are for ladies” my father used to say.’ She laughed. ‘If Lester gets wind of all this, he’ll have the nurses pushing his hospital bed here from Coventry Hospital to put a stop to it.’
From what little he’d gleaned of the elderly, broken-hipped hunting devotee, Luca suspected he’d be hitching the bed to a towbar and driving it straight back.
As he’d predicted, the two new next-door neighbours had a brief bout of furious stallion bellyaching and snorting, like neighbours well versed in bin and parking disputes, then settled to their hay nets to regroup, both quietly pleased to have something new to think about.
‘I think we’ll turn him round, don’t you?’ Ronnie was in her power pose. ‘You’re exactly what he needs. We’ll have him right in no time. How long are you thinking it will take?’ she asked, gathering up rugs, ever impatient. ‘When’s our deadline?’
Luca suspected it could take months. He thought about her offer to take him straight to Germany if he couldn’t do it. ‘We’ll know by Valentine’s Day.’
‘I’ll love you by then if that’s true.’ She laughed.
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
9
‘C’mon, kochanie, you love having me all to yourself.’
‘You’ve abandoned our babies in a foreign country!’
‘In my homeland, Bridge.’
Shocked that Aleš had left their children in Poland without consulting her, Bridge was determined to get an apology from him. Flavia and Zak would be flying home with his brother’s family tomorrow, and even though she knew they’d be perfectly safe, and they loved their wujek and ciocia, and that it was lovely to have just made carefree love all over the house, she still wanted a sorry. Just a little one.
The argument, which had been going in circles so long she was feeling dizzy, was typical of the Mazurs. Feeling aggrieved about something – usually justifiably – Bridge would buzz and needle and rag until big, patient Aleš conceded with a grand romantic gesture. Or exploded. It was a calculated gamble.
‘They need Mummy or Daddy there.’
Her martyrdom was slightly blunted when he started pulling dirty laundry from his suitcase mid-argument and sorting it out.
‘They’re so tiny,’ she wailed as the sea of rugby shirts rose.
‘You left them,’ he pointed out matter-of-factly, separating lights from darks. For a mountainous and masculine man, Aleš was refreshingly domesticated. Friends always assumed Bridge had house-trained him, but he’d come fully loaded from the start, with added stain-remover and fabric conditioner.
‘I came back early for a job interview! You just wanted a booty call.’
‘But you did not get job,’ he said as he loaded the machine. ‘I did get booty call.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Bridge felt uncharacteristically tearful, which she guiltily acknowledged could be as much about the job as the kids, who utterly adored being in Poland with all the family. ‘I can’t believe our babies are thousands of miles away right now.’
‘I could only get one stand-by ticket. I had to be with you, moja kochana.’ He pulled off his shirt. It was a very Fantasy Ash move, only marred by Aleš studying the washing instructions on the label.
‘We were apart one night.’ The fight had gone out of her argument as she tilted her head and, squinting, visualised the dog tags swinging against the six pack. ‘Just one night.’
‘How crazy is that? I missed you so much.’ He cast her a smile over one big shoulder, and she found herself wondering if he wouldn’t suit a tattoo there, something Maori perhaps, or a Roman armour sleeve like the one she’d seen at the gym. On the pec dec. A man with wolf eyes.
Loosening the knot on her dressing gown, Bridge levered herself up onto the washing machine so she could wrap her legs around him. ‘You crazy big Pole.’
‘Hey, what is this?’ He had a sock in each hand.
She slid her hands around his neck and pulled him closer. ‘Do you think you can go again?’
Ash was out of the cellar.
*
Mack still wasn’t answering his phone. Ringing from the stable cottage, Pax wished she’d emailed him while she had the chance in the Mack Shack, craving the cool calm of written words compared to the improvised chaos of speaking after the tone: I think it’s best if I stay at the stud for a few days. I have collected some of my things. Can we talk about Kes ASAP? Pax. Not: ‘Mack, it’s me again. We need to – that is, I’m going to – be quiet, Stubbs! – my phone died and I’m now at the stud, I mean don’t call my phone, call here. Kes can stay here. I’m staying here. He can be with you too. We need to work out days. Can you call me when you get this?’
Her laptop sat uselessly on the table behind her, a reminder that her late grandparents and Lester had barricaded themselves into their generation, firmly attached to a world where one wrote letters, even to near neighbours, and stayed married at all costs. Ronnie, who sprang from a mobile-free, guilt-free era of baby boomers that left notes on mantelpieces and deserted marriages as casually as popping out to the shops, was equally unbothered by the stud’s prehistoric isolation, treating it as a digital detox; she was happy camping here like a gypsy, a temporary curator, her bags barely unpacked. For Pax, doing without Wi-Fi and alcohol simultaneously was a double cold turkey which, so soon after Christmas, was already choking her. Her thrash metal headache was pounding now, the urge to kick things making her leg muscles twitch constantly.
Cutting off Mack’s droning outgoing message by hooking the receiver angrily back on its wall holster in the kitchen, she pulled up the little blind above the sink, so stiff it was like raising a portcullis. Behind it was a tiny casement window that looked out into the main stable yard. Her mother was talking to Luca outside Cruisoe’s corner box. Why was she standing like a badass bouncer?
Pax turned away, eyes skirting the ugly oak-trimmed melamine cupboards, already knowing what her unconscious mind was seeking out. Having thought she’d never want to drink again just hours earlier, the tug at the back of her mouth was getting too persistent to ignore. She tried Mack’s line again, an activity to stop herself searching for booze as much as anything else, shuddering with revulsion at his nasal outgoing message, the Scooootish vowels soooo irritating. Normality had turned to demonisation so quickly. She wondered if she’d be able to bring herself to like him again one day, and if he could bring himself to forgive her for all this, to accept this was a good thing, releasing two escape capsules before the big, burning impact. He’d never forgiven his ex-wife for d
eserting him and taking the children beyond reach… Oh shit, not more tears. Oh, Kes. When would the thrum of adrenaline washing constantly around her body stop?
‘God, I need a drink,’ she told Knott. Luca would probably tell her she just needed God. If only he could turn water into wine…
As Pax picked up the receiver to dial Mack’s number again, it occurred to her that her multiple call attempts would come up on his phone’s log. She’d worked too hard at self-control to let him power-play missed calls. She rang Lizzie instead, grateful to be able to cry on the shoulder of someone who understood and was prepared to listen as she unloaded the horror of the past twenty-four hours. Playing down her drunken awfulness at the hotel, she wept and growled with frustration about Mack’s current stand-off.
‘They always do the into-my-cave after the he-man shouty control thing,’ Lizzie reassured, annoyingly eager to move onto the subject of Luca O’Brien. ‘So, is the Horsemaker good-looking?’
‘If you’re a Chewbacca fetishist. And into priests.’
‘He’s a priest?’
‘He’s a moralising veggie which is close enough. Mummy’s predictably all over him already. I caught them in a clinch, earlier. He must be twenty years younger than her.’
‘Ew.’
Pax peered out of the sink window, wondering if ‘clinch’ was a bit misleading; they’d looked more like they were about to Morris dance. But there was been something about the way Luca looked at Ronnie, the way so many men looked at her mother, that put a fist in the hollow between her ribs.
Luca was letting himself out of the stable beside Cruisoe’s, carrying a wicking rug. He looked exhausted. She suddenly felt incredibly bad for not helping out. He’d flown all night, slept on a chair, and he was out there while she skulked in here pressing redial.
Taking the rug from him, Ronnie now strode across the yard with a toss of her blonde hair. Luca watched her backside the whole way. Pax stopped feeling bad about not helping.
‘Bay was here this morning,’ she told Lizzie, moving away to open the cupboards within reach. Row upon row of Fray Bentos tins faced her. Lester liked to buy in bulk.
